"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