“I don't know that. You overrate your sex—and mine. We don't deserve such generosity. The proof is, we reward those who are not so—delicate.”
“I don't trouble my head about your sex. They are nothing to me, and never will be. If you think I have done my duty like a man, and as much like a gentleman as my homely education permits, that is enough for me, and I shall sail for China as happy as anything on earth can make me now.”
Lucy answered this by crying gently, silently, tenderly.
“Don't ye cry. Have I said something to vex you?”
“Oh no, no.”
“Are you alarmed still?”
“Oh, no; I have such faith in you.”
“Then go to sleep again, like a lamb.”
“I will; then I shall not tease you with my conversation.”
“Now there is a way to put it.”