“Hah!” said the Doctor dreamily; “it’s a strange world, Very. Perhaps we had better go back to Iquique.”
“Oh, papa!” cried the girl in dismay.
“Don’t you want to go?”
“What, leave this lovely place, where it is always green, and the flowers are everywhere, for that dreadful dry desert place where one is parched to death? Ah, no, no, no!”
“Humph!” said the Doctor—“always green. Don’t seem so, Very: something, to my mind, is getting ripe at a tremendous rate.”
“I don’t know what you mean, dear,” said the girl consciously.
“Don’t you? Ah well, never mind. But you need not be uneasy,—I do not mean to go back: this place will just suit me to write my book, and I’m not going to stir for all the Lord Pinemounts in England.”
“I wonder how you could ever leave so beautiful a country as England, papa,” said Veronica, as the breakfast went on.
“You wouldn’t wonder, if you knew all,” said the Doctor thoughtfully.
“All, papa?—all what?”