"Have you, Phoebe? Why, what about?" Then, as he saw her flush and bite her pouting lower lip, he added: "Not because of me? I say, how jolly of you! But there wasn't any necessity—"
"How silly you are! As if one did things—worried and that sort of thing—because it was necessary! It's because one can't help it."
"Then it was all the nicer of you. But I meant that really it wasn't anything to worry about. I'm as right as rain, and it's given me a jolly good excuse to go up to London and see the world."
Panic peeped in Phoebe's brown eyes, giving her a flashing look of something woodland, despite her would-be smart attire. She dropped her lids to hide it.
"London…." she murmured. Then, sitting upright, and staring at her twisting fingers:
"Ishmael!…"
A pause which Ishmael broke by asking, "Well?"
"Nothing. Only—I was wondering. Whether you … how you'd like London, and whether you wouldn't find down here, and all of us, very dull when you come back?"
"What rot! Of course not! Why should I?" asked Ishmael, already so in London in anticipation that he could not even take an interest in his return to this older world.
"Oh, I don't know. I only wondered. You never wonder about things, do you, Ishmael?"