Barbara says, "Hush!" and Tou Tou is beginning to embark on a long argument to prove that a man cannot have more than one wife at a time, when she is summarily hustled into silence, for I speak again.
"He has some property in the West Indies—I knew he had before—" (with a passing flash of pride in my superior information)—"I dare say you did not—and he has to go out there to look after it."
"By himself?"
"By himself, worse luck!" reply I, despondently, reinterring my countenance in my pocket-handkerchief.
"And you decline to accompany him? Well, I think you are about right!" says Algy, rising, lounging over to the empty hearth, and looking at his face with a glance of serious fondness in the glass that hangs above the mantel-shelf.
"I do nothing of the kind!" cry I, indignantly, "I have not the chance! he will not take me!"
I am not looking at him, nor, indeed, in his direction at all; but I am aware that Bobby is giving Tou Tou a private and severe nudge, which means "Attend! here is confirmation of my theory for you!" and that the idea of the hypothetical black lady is again traversing his ingenuous mind.
"I hope he will bring us some Jamaica ginger," he says, presently.
"I wish you would mention it, Nancy! the suggestion would come best from you, would not it?"
"And you are to be left alone at Tempest? Is that the plan?" asks Algy, turning his eyes from his own face, and fixing them on the less interesting object of mine.