“I might, Jim, if you wasn’t here,” retorted Molloy; “but it’s not easy to feel bad alongside o’ you.”
“That’s like a double-edged sword, Jack—cuts two ways. W’ich way d’ee mean it?”
“‘W’ichever way you please,’ as the man said w’en the alligator axed ’im w’ether he’d prefer to be chawed up or bolted whole.”
Concluding that, on the whole, the conversation of his friends did not tend to edification, Miles left them and went to one of the starboard gangways, from which he could take a contemplative view of Nature in her beautiful robe of night. Curiously enough, Marion chanced to saunter towards the same gangway, and unexpectedly found him there.
“A lovely night, Mr Miles,” she remarked.
Miles started, and turned with slight confusion in his face, which, happily, the imperfect light concealed.
“Beautiful indeed!” he exclaimed, thinking of the face before him—not of the night!
“A cool, beautiful night like this,” continued the girl—who was of the romantic age of sixteen—“will remain long, I should think, in your memory, and perhaps mitigate, in some degree, the hardships that are before you on the burning sand of Egypt.”
“The memory of this night,” returned Miles, with fervour, “will remain with me for ever! It will not only mitigate what you are pleased to call hardships, but will cause me to forget them altogether—forget everything!”
“Nay, that were impossible,” rejoined Marion, with a slight laugh; “for a true soldier cannot forget Duty!”