As they breasted the hill together, the young man told her all at some length.
"Was she much to you?" asked the girl keenly.
Her own mother was all the world to her.
He shook his head.
"Oh! that's all right," replied the girl, relieved and yet resentful, "if you didn't care."
"In some ways I'm glad for her sake," continued the young man. "She was always unhappy. You see she was ambitious. One of the disappointments of her life was that my father wouldn't take a peerage."
"Can't you be happy and ambitious?" asked Boy, peeping at him in the wary way he loved.
Jim Silver laughed and flicked his whip.
"I doubt it," he said.
"Aren't you ambitious?" she inquired.