"A splendid mansion has been given us, but my flower-bird has found it too full. I wish for my native air. Prescribe."
The brevity of the message was very characteristic of the language. Equally characteristic of the stylography was the fact that the words occupied about an inch beyond the address. Following her pencil as she pointed to the ciphers, I said—
"Is not asny caré a false concord? And why have you used the past tense?"
This ill-timed pedantry, applying to Martial grammar the rules of that with which my boyhood had been painfully familiarised, provoked, amid all our trouble, Eveena's low silver-toned laugh.
"I meant it," she answered. "My father will look at his pupil's writing with both eyes."
"Well, you are out of reach even of the leveloo."
She laughed again.
"Asnyca-re," she said; the changed accentuation turning the former words into the well-remembered name of my landing-place, with the interrogative syllable annexed.
This message despatched, we could only await the reply. Nestling among the cushions at my knee, her head resting on my breast, Eveena said—
"And now, forgive my presumption in counselling you, and my reminding you of what is painful to both. But what to us is as the course of the clock, is strange as the stars to you. You must see—them, and must order all household arrangements; and" (glancing at a dial fixed in the wall) "the black is driving down the green."