“You mean thing!” cried Mabel.
“Don’t lay that up against me,” he begged, penitently, “and I’ll send you back a little crocodile from the Nile.”
“Oh, the horrid thing!” cried Clara with a shudder.
“I’m doing the best I can,” said Jim, plaintively. “I can’t send you one of the pyramids.”
“That’s the last we’ll see of Africa,” went on Joe. “After that, we set sail for Italy and land at Naples. Then we work our way up through Rome, Florence, Milan, Monte Carlo, Marseilles, Paris and London. We’ll stay about a month in Great Britain, visiting Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin. Then we’ll make tracks for home, and maybe we won’t be glad to get here!”
The vision conjured up by this array of famous cities offered such scope for endless surmise and speculation that they were surprised at the flight of time when Mrs. Matson smilingly summoned them to supper.
Of course, Joe sat beside Mabel and Jim beside Clara. If, in the course of the evening meal, Joe’s hand and Mabel’s met beneath the table, it was purely by accident. Jim, on his side would 59 cheerfully have risked such an accident, but had no such luck.
Joe was happy, supremely happy in the presence by his side of the dearest girl in all the world. Yet there was a queer little ache at his heart because of the apparent indifference with which Mabel had viewed their coming separation.
“You haven’t said once,” he said to her in a low tone, with a touch of tender reproach, “that you were sorry I was going.”
“Why should I,” answered Mabel, demurely, “since I am going with you?”