To tell the truth, I meant to have gone out there this spring--had, indeed, almost fixed upon a day for starting, when--_you_ stopped me." "_I!_" "Yes," he says, pausing in his walk in front of me, and looking at me with a face full of sunshine, content, and laughter; a face whence hurricanes, West Indies, and agents have altogether fled; "you called me a '_beast_', and the expression startled me so much--I suppose from not being used to it--that it sent the West Indies, yes, and the East ones too, clean out of my head." "I hope," say I, anxiously, "that you will never tell any one that I said _that_.

They would think that I was in the habit of calling people '_beasts_', and indeed--_indeed_, I very seldom use so strong a word, _even_ to Bobby." "Well," he says, not heeding my request, not, I am sure, hearing it, and resuming his walk, "what is done cannot be undone, so there is no use whining about it, Nancy" (again stopping before me, and this time taking my face in his two hands).

"Will you mind much, or will you not ?--do you ever mind _any thing much_, I wonder ?" (eagerly and wistfully scanning my face, as if trying to read my character through the mask of my pale skin, and small and unremarkable features).

"Well, there is no help for it--as I did not go then, I must go now." "Go!" repeat I, panting in horrid surprise, "go where ?--to Antigua ?" "Yes, to Antigua." No need now to dress my voice in the tones of factitious tragedy--no need to lengthen my face artificially.

It feels all of a sudden quite a yard and a half long.