“There is another thing too,” Charlie went on; “to go in this way will cost far less than to go in any other. From what Grant has told me about other voyages, I know he takes a passenger in this way at about what one may call boarding rates, say a hundred pounds for the whole year. Now, on a steamer one could only be away about three months at most for that sum, and unless one took the return journey at once, one would also have hotel and travelling expenses. If I go with Grant, Lucy, I need not take more than one hundred and a few odd pounds with me, and I can leave you all the rest of our little hoard. So thriftily as you will manage, I believe you need not trouble about earning, and yet we sha’n’t be penniless when I get home.” Lucy answered in nervous haste. “Oh, but I must do all I can. It will help to pass the time; it will help me to bear your being away.” Charlie put out his hand towards her. “Little woman,” he said, “is this going to cost you too much in this way? What is the good of making any effort to save me which is to kill you? And perhaps I don’t need any such saving after all. Why should I go?” Lucy rallied herself. “Of course it will be very terrible to miss you,” she said, feeling instinctively that if the part she was playing was to be accepted, she must not overdo it. “The days will be very long without you to wait for and to talk with. I shall need all I can get to occupy me. But as for not being able to bear it, Charlie, I suppose I am made of the same stuff as other women. Plenty of them have to bear the same—and worse. Captain Grant’s wife herself has to bear it, and from her photographs she does not look as if it wore her to fiddlestrings.” “She is used to it,” said Charlie, with a man’s easy way of “seeing a difference.” “Certainly. I daresay she felt it worse the first time,” assented Lucy. “On the other hand, it is always going on. Almost as soon as one absence ends another begins. Now, I shall know that mine is one supreme effort, and then—reunion!” “I wish Captain Grant’s wife were nearer at hand—in London instead of in Peterhead,” said Charlie. “It would seem cheery for you wives to be together at home, while we husbands were together on the ocean.” “Well, perhaps she will come up and spend a month with me,” remarked Lucy. “If she comes in the Institute’s holidays, I should be at leisure to show her the sights, if she has not seen them all already. It would be great fun to have her here.” (Long afterwards Lucy remembered that little speech.) “One thing is, if I go, I am not leaving you lonely, Luce,” mused Charlie. “There’s Florence and Brand not very far off.” Lucy said nothing. Her husband looked up with the brightness born of a sudden thought.