"Don't fib, now. You are not in the habit of wearing such a countenance for nothing."
"I can't help my countenance, Tom," she rejoined, with just a suggestion of a break in her voice.
Tom looked at her a moment in silence, and then delicately turned his head away. After dinner he took her arm very affectionately, and they strolled out on deck together.
Takashima was sitting alone, as they came out. He was waiting for Cleo, as usual, and had been watching the door of the dining-room expectantly. Tom drew her off in a different direction from where the Japanese was sitting. For a short time they walked up and down the deck, neither of them speaking a word. Then Tom broke the silence, saying carelessly, as he lit a cigar:
"Mind my smoking, sis?"
"No, Tom," the girl answered, looking at him gratefully. Instinctively she felt the ready sympathy he always extended to her, often without even knowing her trouble, and seldom asking for her confidence. When she was worried or distressed about anything, Tom would take her very firmly away from every one, and if she had anything to tell she usually told it to him; for since they had been little girl and boy together Tom had been the recipient of all her woes. When he was a little boy of twelve, his father and mother both having died, Cleo's father, his uncle, had taken him into his family, and the two children had been brought up together. After the death of his uncle he had stood to the mother and Cleo as father, brother, and son in one, and they both became very dependent on him. Once in a while when he was feeling exceptionally loving to Cleo he would call her "little sis." That night he did so very lovingly.
"Feeling blue, little sis?" he asked.
"Yes, Tom."
Tom cleared his throat. "Er—er—Takashima?"