With spirits sensibly worsened by his interview, Burgoyne returns to the Minerva, and, mounting to Byng's bedroom, finds that young gentleman stretched upon his bed, gloom in his usually jocund eye, and an open letter lying on the floor beside him. But Jim is far too preoccupied to notice anybody's gloom but his own.
"I came to ask at what hour we are to set off this afternoon?" he says with a sort of flat moroseness in his tone.
"We, indeed!" rejoins the other with a groan, and rolling over with a sort of petulance on the bed, dishevelling the neatly-smoothed pillow by burrowing his ruffled head in it—"we!"
There is such a heart-rent woe in the accent with which the last monosyllable is pronounced that for a moment Burgoyne has no other idea but that his young friend, too, has become aware of the "screw loose," has heard, perhaps in detail, that story from before whose ominous opening he himself had fled. The thought sends his heart into his throat, so as to render him incapable of asking an explanation of the other's affliction.
"We!" repeats Byng for the third time, and very indistinctly, as he is now lying entirely on his face.
"Why do you go on saying 'we' in that idiotic way?" asks Jim at last, recovering his voice—recovering it only to employ it in imitating the younger man's accents, in a manner which displays more exasperation than natural talent for mimicry. It is not a politely-worded inquiry, but it has the desired result of acting as a tonic on him at whom it is aimed, making him not only roll over once again, but actually sit up.
"Why do I say we?" repeats he, his young eyes looking lamentably out from under the fall of his tumbled hair—"because it is not we! it is you! You lucky dog, you will have her all to yourself!"
Jim heaves an inaudible sigh of relief. Whatever may be the cause of his companion's enigmatical conduct, it is evidently not what he had feared. There is, however, no evidence of relief or any other mild quality in his next remark.
"If you would talk less like an ass, I should have a better chance of knowing what you are driving at!"
The query seems only to renew and deepen the other's tribulation. He falls back into his former attitude.