“What’s that?” he said. “Leave me out of the question if you want to swim.”
“We don’t want to swim, Mr. Pilbrow—not unless the tide won’t serve us to the end; and then I hope it’ll be only a little way.”
“Well,” he answered, “go when you will; only I want to have a word with you first, Richard.”
“You are all right again, sir?”
“Right?” he muttered. “I don’t know. The land drops and flees before me. The cold is in my heart. I must ease it, Richard—I must ease it of its secret load before that winter gets home.”
“O, don’t talk like that!” I complained. “It’s to flout Providence in the face after this mercy.”
“Well,” he said, with a melancholy smile, “I shall be lighter anyhow for the easing. With this weight continuing in me, I should sink like a plumb.”
“There’s to be no thought of sinking, Mr. Pilbrow,” I said. “But if there’s something you’ll feel the better for ridding yourself of, why say it and have done.”
He turned stiffly in his place so that the spar rocked, and looked at me, where I sat behind him, with a most yearning affection.
“If you were entitled to the truth before,” he said, “how much more now, when you have saved my life.”