"No, please don't do that," Ralph said, coloring hotly. "I didn't mean anything, you know."
"Now, don't spoil it. You meant I suppose, what was quite proper you should mean, that Captain O'Connor by introducing me to you had made up for his last delinquency."
"Yes, that is what I did mean," Ralph agreed.
"Captain O'Connor tells me that you have been through all sorts of adventures, Mr. Conway—been carried off by a French privateer, and taken to a pirate island, and done all sorts of things."
"The 'all sorts of things' did not amount to much, Miss Regan. I made myself as useful as I could, and picked up French; and at last when the privateer sailed away I walked down to the shore and met our sailors when they landed. There was, I can assure you, nothing in any way heroic about the part I had to play."
"Still it was an adventure."
"Oh! yes, it was that; and upon the whole I think I liked it, except when there was a chance of having a fight with our own people."
"That would have been dreadful. What would you have done?"
"Well, I certainly wouldn't have fought; but what I should have done would, I suppose, have depended upon circumstances. I suppose I should have jumped overboard if I had the chance."
"And is it true what Captain O'Connor was saying, that you had to do like the other pirates on the island?"