“You are wrong again,” say I, reddening, and still speaking with some heat, “I wished to go—­I begged him to take me.  However sick I had been, I should have liked it better than being left moping here, without a soul to speak to!”

Silence for a moment.  Then he speaks with a rather sarcastic smile.

“I confess myself puzzled; if you were dying to go, and he were dying to take you, how comes it that you are sitting at the present moment on this bench?”

I can give no satisfactory answer to this query, so take refuge in a smile.

“I see,” say I, tartly, “that you have still your old trick of asking questions.  I wish that you would try to get the better of it; it is very disadvantageous to you, and very trying to other people!”

He takes this severe set-down in silence.

The trees that surround the garden are slowly darkening.  The shadows that intervene between the round masses of the sycamore-leaves deepen, deepen.  A bat flitters dumbly by.  Vick, to whose faith all things seem possible, runs sharply barking and racing after it.  We both laugh at the fruitlessness of her undertaking, and the joint merriment restores suavity to me, and assurance to him.

“And are you to stay here by yourself all the time he is away—­all?”

“God forbid!” reply I, with devout force.

“Not? well, then—­I am really afraid this is a question again, but I cannot help it.  If you will not volunteer information, I must ask for it—­who is to be your companion?”

“I suppose they will take turns,” say I, relapsing into dejection, as I think of the precarious nature of the society on which I depend; “sometimes one, sometimes another, whichever can get away best—­they will take turns.”

“And who is to have the first turn?” he asks, leaning back in the corner of the seat, so as to have a fuller view of my lamentable profile; “when is the first installment of consolatory relatives to arrive?”

“Algy and Barbara were to have come to-day,” reply I, feeling a covert resentment against something of faintly gibing in his tone, but being conscious that it is not perceptible enough to justify another snub, even if I had one ready, which I have not.

“And they did not?”

“Now is not that a silly question?” cry I, tartly, venting the crossness born of my desolation on the only person within reach; “if they had, should I be sitting moping here with nobody but Vick to talk to?”

“You forget me! may I not run in couples even with a dog?” he asks, with a little bitter laugh.

“I did not forget you,” reply I, coolly; “but you do not affect the question one way or another—­you will be gone directly and—­when you are—­”

“Thank you for the hint,” he cries springing up, picking up his little stick off the grass and flushing.