“I want to hear what your answer was,—what reply you made him!” gasped out Lizzy, painfully.
“Could there be much doubt about that?” cried Beecher. “I booked the bet at once.”
“No, no, I will not believe it,” said she, in a voice of deep emotion: “you never did so. It was but last night, as we walked here on this very spot, I told you how, in some far-away colony of England, we could not fail to earn an honorable living; that I was well content to bear my share of labor, and you agreed with me that such a life was far better than one of dependence or mere emergency. You surely could not have forgotten this!”
“I did n't exactly forget it, but I own I fancied twelve hundred a year and a snug old house a better thing than road-making at Victoria or keeping a grammar-school at Auckland.”
“And you had the courage to reason thus to the man who had descended to the ranks as a common soldier to vindicate a name to which nothing graver attached than a life of waste and extravagance! No, no, tell me that you are only jesting with me, Annesley. You never said this!”
“Lizzy's right—by Heaven, she's right!” broke in Grog, resolutely.
“If you mean that I refused him, you're both much mistaken; and to clinch the compact, I even said I 'd set out for Ireland to-morrow.”
“I 'm for New Orleans,” said Grog, with a rough shake, as though throwing a weight from his shoulders.
“Will you have a travelling-companion, father?” asked Lizzy, in a low voice.
“Who is it to be, girl?”