“A beneficent shipping company provides one camp stool to each cabin, you’ll find—­if you’re lucky,” he said; but there was not one in Marcella’s cabin.  He sat down on his own, and then, standing up awkwardly as she sat quite casually and comfortably on the floor, offered it to her.

“Oh no—­keep it.  I always sit on the floor,” she explained, and this time he stared at the end of her nose.

He explained the mystery of powdered milk to her; reaching over for the tin to examine it more closely, she tipped it over.

“I keep doing this sort of thing,” she explained, “ever since I left Lashnagar.  Most things I touch I knock over.”

“Weak co-ordination,” he said.

“Whatever’s that?” She paused in cutting a slice of cake with an enormous clasp-knife Wullie had given her years ago.

He immediately looked consciously learned.

“Like a baby, you know—­it grabs for a thing and can’t aim at it.  It reaches a few inches the other side of it.  It means your brain and body are not on speaking terms.”

“Oh, my goodness!  Am I like that?  Does it matter?  How do you know all about it?”

“I learnt it at the hospital.”

“Oh, are you a doctor then?”

“No.  N-not n-now,” he stammered, and began to untie and retie his shoe lace very carefully.  “I—­I was going to be.”

“You must be clever,” she said admiringly.  “What a lot of things we can talk about!”

“Rather!  I’m w-wondering what m-makes you like that!—­you know what I mean, without co-ordination.  Babies and drunkards and that sort of thing usually are.”

“Well, I’m neither of those.  But I’ll tell you why I think it is.  It’s because I’ve lived in the open air, where there was nothing to knock over except trees and stones; or else I’ve lived in an enormous house where everything was so big you couldn’t knock it over if you tried.  I’m not used to being among things and people.”

“Been in prison?” he said, smiling for the first time.

She entered on a vivid description of Lashnagar.  He seemed to think it was a fairy tale, though he listened eagerly enough, and once she saw him actually look directly at her face for an instant.

“Are you going to Sydney?” he asked at length.

“I’m booked through to Sydney, but I’m going to live with an uncle right in the backblocks somewhere, and he may meet me at Melbourne.  I’ve never seen him yet.  Where are you going?”

“Sydney.”

“To live there?”

“No, die probably,” he said, and his face that had been animated suddenly became morose and gloomy, and his hand shook as he lighted a cigarette.  Her eyes opened wider.

“Are you ill, then?” she asked gently.  “You don’t look ill.”

“No, I’m not ill.  By the way, do you smoke?  It didn’t occur to me to offer you a cigarette.”

She shook her head, watching him with a puzzled frown.  She wondered why his hands gave her such a vague sense of discomfort as she watched him light another cigarette.  It was not until she was in her bunk that night that she remembered that his nails were bitten and ragged—­one finger was bleeding and inflamed.