“But I don’t want to know it,” said Ella sharply. “If I had thought you would ever talk to me in such a silly way I would never have let you come out with me. When I’m thinking about serious things, too!”
“Can’t you see that this is serious to me?”
“It’s only all the more ridiculous. You must either promise never to talk such nonsense to me again, or you must give up the walks.”
“Very well, then, I must give up the walks,” said Clarence resignedly, “for I can’t make the promise.”
And he walked away over the rough grass, and began to look out to sea on his own account. Ella, in spite of the “serious things” which had occupied her thoughts, was forced to turn her attention to this importunate and foolish person close at hand, and she did so with a much graver countenance than was her wont in matters relating to him. The fact was that this unexpected threat of withdrawing his despised attentions woke her suddenly to the fact that she should miss them. Ella discovered all at once that she was not so insensible as she had imagined to the ordinary feminine pleasure in the possession of a devoted slave. Even a Clarence who occasionally talked nonsense would be better than no Clarence at all. Some expression of these conclusions found its way to her face, for the crestfallen swain was emboldened by her glance to draw near her again. She said no kind word however, and he was afraid that further pleading at the moment might be injudicious, so they stood very quietly side by side until Ella broke out vehemently:
“I wish I had twenty thousand pounds!”
The wish and the fiery manner in which it was uttered took Clarence so completely by surprise that instead of assuring her that she had only to say the word, and he would lay that sum at her feet, as perhaps she had expected of the impulsive little Irishman, he only said simply:
“What for?”
“To throw into the sea,” was her surprising answer.
He laughed, supposing that this was a faint sort of joke.