“Well, Tom, are you feeling badly to-day?” Earle asked, laying down his paper.
“N-o,” he returned, hesitatingly, and with some embarrassment.
Then, with an air of recklessness that Earle had not noticed before during all his sickness, he asked:
“I say, what kind of a place is Botany Bay?”
Earle started, the question was so entirely unexpected; but he understood at once now why he had been so sad and absent-minded of late. He had been thinking of his probable future.
“It is supposed to be rather a desolate kind of place,” he said.
“Folks who are sent there at the expense of the Crown, don’t get rich very fast, and it is somewhat inconvenient about getting away from there if one should happen to wish to visit his native land, eh?” Tom Drake said, with a ghastly attempt to be facetious.
“No,” Earle replied, very gravely, and with a searching glance at his companion.
“There’s some comfort in knowing a fellow hain’t got to leave many behind him to grieve over him,” he said, absently, and as if speaking more to himself than to Earle.
“Where do your friends reside?” he asked.