"Well, I hate dogs," said Eustace Hignett querulously. "I remember
Wilhelmina once getting quite annoyed with me because I refused to step
in and separate a couple of the brutes, absolute strangers to me, who
were fighting in the street. I reminded her that we were all fighters
now-a-ways, that life itself was in a sense a fight: but she wouldn't
be reasonable about it. She said that Sir Galahad would have done it
like a shot. I thought not. We have no evidence whatsoever that Sir
Galahad was ever called upon to do anything half as dangerous. And,
anyway, he wore armour. Give me a suit of mail reaching well down over
the ankles, and I will willingly intervene in a hundred dog fights. But
in thin flannel trousers no!"

Sam rose. His heart was light. He had never, of course, supposed that
the girl was anything but perfect; but it was nice to find his high
opinion of her corroborated by one who had no reason to exhibit her in
a favourable light. He understood her point of view and sympathised
with it. An idealist, how could she trust herself to Eustace Hignett?
How could she be content with a craven who, instead of scouring the
world in the quest for deeds of daring do, had fallen down so
lamentably on his first assignment? There was a specious attractiveness
about poor old Eustace which might conceivably win a girl's heart for a
time; he wrote poetry, talked well, and had a nice singing voice; but,
as a partner for life ... well, he simply wouldn't do. That was all there
was to it. He simply didn't add up right. The man a girl like Wilhelmina
Bennett required for a husband was somebody entirely different ...
somebody, felt Samuel Marlowe, much more like Samuel Marlowe.

Swelled almost to bursting-point with these reflections, he went on
deck to join the ante-luncheon promenade. He saw Billie almost at once.
She had put on one of these nice sacky sport-coats which so enhance