"Do they—do not they think it strange of me not to have been near them all this time?"
"They may do"—dryly.
"They did not say so?"
"They did not; perhaps"—sarcastically—"the subject was too acutely painful for them to allude to."
Frequently as he has exposed himself to them, his Mentor's sneers never fail to send the crimson racing into Byng's face, and it finds its way there now. It does not, however, prevent his proceeding, after a confused moment or two, with his anxious catechism.
"She—she has not referred to the subject?"
"What subject?"
"To—to me?"
"She has never mentioned your name. Stay"—his veracity winning a reluctant victory over his ill-nature—"one day she said that you were sunshiny, and that she liked sunshine."
As he speaks he looks down at his boots, too unaffectedly annoyed at the justification of Elizabeth's epithet which its retailing has worked on Byng's countenance to be able to contemplate him with any decent patience. But there is enough evidence in the boy's voice of the effect wrought upon him by Miss Le Marchant's adjective to make his comrade repent very heartily of having repeated it.