“Forgive me, Nan!” He was in a passion of penitence, fearing that this time he had gone too far and angered her in earnest. “Ah, don’t be cruel. It is our last day together for Heaven knows how long.”
“Well, that’s a mercy.”
“Ye don’t mean that, Nan? Ye can’t mean that ye care nothing about me. That you are glad I’m going.”
“You should mend your manners,” she reproved him by way of compromise.
“Why, so I will. It’s only that I want you so; that I’m going away—far away; that after to-day I won’t see you again maybe for years. If ye say that ye don’t care for me at all, why, then I don’t think that I’ll come back to Potheridge ever. But if ye care—be it never so little, Nan—if you’ll wait for me, it’ll send me away with a good heart, it’ll give me strength to become great. I’ll conquer the world for you, my dear,” he ended grandiloquently, as is the way of youth in its unbounded confidence. “I’ll bring it back to toss it in your lap.”
Her eyes were shining. His devotion and enthusiasm touched her. But her mischievous perversity must be dissembling it. She laughed on a rising inflection that was faintly mocking.
“I shouldn’t know what to do with it,” said she.
That and her laughter angered him. He had opened his heart. He had been boastful in his enthusiasm, he had magnified himself and felt himself shrinking again under the acid of her derision. He put on a sudden frosty dignity.
“You may laugh, but there’ll come a day maybe when you won’t laugh. You may be sorry when I come back.”
“Bringing the world with you,” she mocked him.