The Girl on the Boat - Penn State University

information which, on reflection, he did not wish to
reveal.
“Once— …?” said Jane.
“Oh, well, I was just going to show you what mother
is like. I—I was going out to lunch with a man, and—
and—” Eustace was not a ready improvisator—“and she
didn’t want me to go, so she stole all my trousers!”
Jane Hubbard started, as if, wandering through one
of her favourite jungles, she had perceived a snake in
her path. She was thinking hard. That story which Billie
had told her on the boat about the man to whom she
had been engaged, whose mother had stolen his trousers
on the wedding morning … it all came back to her
with a topical significance which it had never had before.
It had lingered in her memory, as stories will, but
it had been a detached episode, having no personal
meaning for her. But now …. “She did that just to stop
you going out to lunch with a man?” she said slowly.
“Yes, rotten thing to do, wasn’t it?”
Jane Hubbard moved to the foot of the bed, and her
forceful gaze, shooting across the intervening counterpane,
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Girl</strong> on the Boat
176
pinned Eustace to the pillow. She was in the mood which
had caused spines in Somaliland to curl like withered
leaves.
“Were you ever engaged to Billie Bennett?” she demanded.
Eustace Hignett licked dry lips. His face looked like
a hunted melon. <strong>The</strong> flannel bandage, draped around
it by loving hands, hardly supported his sagging jaw.
“Why—er—”
“Were you?” cried Jane, stamping an imperious foot.
<strong>The</strong>re was that in her eye before which warriors of the
lower Congo had become as chewed blotting-paper.
Eustace Hignett shrivelled in the blaze. He was filled
with an unendurable sense of guilt.
“Well—er—yes,” he mumbled weakly.
Jane Hubbard buried her face in her hands and burst
into tears. She might know what to do when alligators
started exploring her tent, but she was a woman.
This sudden solution of steely strength into liquid
weakness had on Eustace Hignett the stunning effects
which the absence of the last stair has on the returning