"Theer is a place out on the clifs ware I went wunse with him. I shall be theer on friday at twelve o'clock. the miss Fennells are going into yawl it is past the furst hed of the clifs. Clarissa."
That was all; but it was enough. It was more than enough. I had not hoped for so much. And yet, as I thought of her readiness to comply with my request, I realized how greatly it proved her love for that worthless young cub in London. For her, a prisoner, she was risking much, just to hear word of him.
"Will she ever listen to what I have to tell her?" said I, and, hearing my voice, Dandy came out of a rabbit-hole and looked up into my face.
"There's a rabbit hiding down there," said he.
"I don't care a damn about your rabbit," I exclaimed. "Will she listen to me—that's what I want to know?"
CHAPTER XV
Now, of course, that I know what Bellwattle has told her husband about me, I view Cruikshank in a different light. Now, moreover, that he imagines he knows my little secret, he does the same with me. I catch his eyes looking at me with a cunning expression that is humorous, too, as though he found a hidden meaning in every word I said.
"This place suits your appetite," he remarked the other morning, at breakfast, when I put away my empty porridge-dish and fell to work upon the fresh mackerel which had been caught at sunrise. "You don't eat like this in London."
Upon my soul, I believe he expects to see me waste away to nothing now that he imagines I am in love. Thank Heaven, a bitter experience has made me too prosaic for that. I may not be a philosopher, but at least I manage to live alone, which cannot be done with such romantic fancies as lead to starvation or any such tricks as that. Indeed, I learn much from Dandy, whose deepest passion never diminishes his excitement when it comes to the moment for Moxon to throw his two biscuits on to the tesselated pavement in the hall. It is he who likes them thrown. At first I had disapproved.
"Can't you put those biscuits on a plate?" I once said to Moxon, "instead of flinging the food at him."