"Now, what have you to say for yourself?" He was endeavouring to answer when Mrs Bowldler came running in and caught up the other tea-tray.
"Which it appears," she panted, "he is in a hurry to catch the post; and I hope the Lord will forgive me for saying that Palmerston had just this instant returned and would go with it. But he has it done up in an envelope, and says boys are not to be trusted. When I was a girl in my teens," pursued Mrs Bowldler, luckily discovering that the second teapot had no water in it, and hastening to the kettle, "we learnt out of a Child's Compendium about a so-called ancient god of the name of Mercury, whence the stuff they put into barometers to go up for fine weather. He had wings on his boots, or was supposed to: which it would be a convenience in these days, with Palmerston's unfortunate habits. For goodness' sake, child," she addressed Fancy, "take him out somewhere, that I mayn't perjure myself twice in one day!"
She vanished.
"Now, what have you to say for yourself?" Fancy turned again upon Palmerston and repeated her question.
"That's what's the matter with me, Miss—Fancy, I mean," confessed he, after a painful struggle with his emotions. "I never had nothing to say for myself, not in this world: and—and—" he plucked up courage— "you got no business to play with me the way you did just now!" he blurted.
"Who said I was a-playin' with you?" Fancy demanded; but Palmerston did not heed.
"And right a-top of your sayin' as writin' was unnatural!" he continued.
She stared at him. "What has that to do with it? . . . Besides, whatever you're drivin' at, I didn' mean as all writin' was unnatural. I got to do enough of it for Mr Rogers, the Lord knows! But for them two, as have spent the best part of their lives navigatin' ships, it do seem—well, we'll call it unmanly somehow."
"That makes it all the worse," growled Palmerston, sticking both hands in his pockets and forcing himself to meet her stare, against which he nodded sullenly. "A man has to lift himself somehow—when he wants something, very bad."
"What is it you want?" asked Fancy.