“Nonsense,” retorted pretty Columbine; “you never really remember. I am convinced that you make it all up as you go along; but you tell it so seriously that it might as well be true. And in any case it does credit to your powers of imagination.”
His story now was of his voyage from Calcutta. He told of moonlight nights in the Indian ocean, of long days of sunny idling on deck, and all the pleasant details of a prosperous voyage over Southern seas.
“Miss Grant wasn’t very pretty,” he observed, lying lazily back and looking up into the blue October sky, “at least not as I remember her; but she was very good company, only a little given to sentimentalizing. She had a guitar, and I will confess I did hate to see that guitar come out.”
“She would be pleased if she could hear you,” laughed Columbine. “What was there so frightful about her guitar?”
“Oh, when she had that she always sang moony songs, and after that—”
“Well?” demanded Miss Dysart, mischievously.
“Oh, after that,” he returned, with an impatient shake of his shoulders, “she was sure to talk sentiment.”
His companion laughed merrily. The faint, almost unconscious feeling of jealousy which had risen at the mention of this engaging young lady had vanished entirely in the indifference with which Mr. Tom spoke of her. She moved her head with a happy little motion not unlike that with which a bird plumes itself. Her soft, low laugh did not really end, but lost itself among the dimples of her cheeks.
Tom regarded her with shining eyes.