“Indeed I want you to forgive me, Jock. You don’t know how often I’ve thought all sorts of horridness about you.”
Jock laughed, “Not more than I deserved, I’ll be bound. How can you be so absurd! If anyone wants forgiveness, it is I. I say, Armie, this is all nonsense. You don’t really think you are done for, or you would not take it so coolly.”
“Of course I know Who can bring us through if He will,” said Armine. “There’s the Rock. I’ve been asking Him all this time—every moment—only I get so sleepy.”
“If He will; but if He won’t?”
“Then there’s Paradise. And Himself and father,” said Armine, still in a dreamy tone.
“Oh, yes; that’s for you! But how about a mad fellow like me? It’s so sneaking just to take to one’s prayers because one’s in a bad case.”
“Oh, Jock! He is always ready to hear! More ready than we to pray!”
“Now don’t begin to improve the occasion,” broke out Jock. “By all the stories that ever were written, I’m the one to come to a bad end, not you.”
“Don’t,” said Armine, with an accent of pain that made Jock cry, hugging him tighter. “There, never mind, Armie; I’ll let you say all you like. I don’t know what made me stop you, except that I’m a beast, and always have been one. I’d give anything not to have gone on playing the fool all my life, so as to be able to mind this as little as you do.”
“I don’t seem awake enough to mind anything much,” said the little boy, “or I should trouble more about Mother and Babie; but somehow I can’t.”