"And for your sake I would rather die than stay. But what is the good of talking about it, Lucy. You and I have no voice in it, though it is all about ourselves. As you say, we are like two tame birds, who have to be moved from one cage into another just as the owner pleases. We belong either to Uncle Tom or Uncle Dosett, just as they like to settle it. Oh, Lucy, I do so wish that I were dead."
"Ayala, that is wicked."
"How can I help it, if I am wicked? What am I to do when I get there? What am I to say to them? How am I to live? Lucy, we shall never see each other."
"I will come across to you constantly."
"I meant to do so, but I didn't. They are two worlds, miles asunder. Lucy, will they let Isadore Hamel come here?" Lucy blushed and hesitated. "I am sure he will come."
Lucy remembered that she had given her friend her address at Queen's Gate, and felt that she would seem to have done it as though she had known that she was about to be transferred to the other uncle's house. "It will make no difference if he does," she said.
"Oh, I have such a dream,—such a castle-in-the-air! If I could think it might ever be so, then I should not want to die."
"What do you dream?" But Lucy, though she asked the question, knew the dream.
"If you had a little house of your own, oh, ever so tiny; and if you and he—?"
"There is no he."