"But you have not," say I, trying to speak in a tone of light and airy cheerfulness, "answered my question yet—how soon we must set off? You know what a woman always thinks of first—her clothes, and I must be seeing to my packing."
"The sooner the better," he answers, with a preoccupied look. "Not later than ten days hence!"
"Ten days!"
Again my jaw falls. He has altogether loosed my hands now, and resumed his walk. I sit down by the table, lean my elbows on it, and push my fingers through my hair in most dejected musing. Polly has been dressing himself; turning his head over his shoulder, and arranging his feathers with his aquiline nose. He has finished now, and has just given vent, in a matter-of-fact, unemotional voice, to an awful oath! There is the sound of brisk feet on the sunny gravel outside. Bobby's face looks in at the window—broad, sunburnt, and laughing.
"Well! what is up now?" cries he, catching a glimpse of my disconsolate attitude. "You look as if the fungi had disagreed with you!"
"Then appearances are deceitful," reply I, trying to be merry, "for they have not."
He has only glanced in upon us in passing: he is gone again now. I rebury my hands in my locks, which, instead of a highly-cultivated garden, I am rapidly making into a wilderness.
"I suppose," say I, in a tone which fitly matches the length of my face, "that Bobby will have got a ship before I come back; I hope they will not send him to any very unhealthy station—Hong-Kong, or the Gold Coast."
"I hope not."
"What port shall we sail from?"