"Just so. My sister, you are very quick with excuses for your hero, your Bayard."
"I still say what I said before."
"Naturally you do. Women always do stick to what they say. They are the unprogressive sex. But we will let him go by. I confess, from the little I have heard of this Bramwell--solitary now no longer--I am interested in him. A man who has kept himself to himself for years must, if there ever was anything in him, have something to say worth listening to when he speaks. We are solitary enough ourselves, goodness knows. Who can tell but this Zimmermann may be induced to cross the Hellespont, or, to be more near the situation, cross over from his Negropont to the mainland? When you meet him to-morrow, say I should be very glad if he would come to us and have a chat and smoke a pipe."
"I will, but I'm sure he doesn't smoke."
"Why are you sure of that, my sister?"
"Because he has quite an intellectual look."
"Thank you, Hetty. Very neat indeed. I shall not forget that thrust for a while. Now" (he raised his warning finger again and shook it at her with a look of portentous meaning) "mind, this is the second man you have fallen in love with during the past three days, and the horrible part of the matter is that both of them are married."
Whatever might be forgotten next morning, one thing was sure to be recollected in Crawford's House. It is a fact that Hetty did not remember to draw her brother's attention to the change of name projected for Freddie the evening before. Nor, strange to say, did her brother revert to the contemplated alteration.
But what was remembered beyond all chance of forgetting was that Freddie had promised to go across to the island again to-day. If the father and aunt happened by any means to lose sight of the fact, they were not allowed to remain a moment in doubt about it. The first thing the boy said when he opened his eyes was, "I'm to go to play with Frank again to-day, amn't I, Auntie Hetty?"
At breakfast he had most of the talk to himself, and all his talk was about Frank and the island, and the boat by which he had gone across, and Frank's father, who had given them both sugar on bread-and-butter, and the old barrow which was in the yard, and which served them with great fidelity as a cab, and a tramcar, and a steamboat, and a house, and a canal-boat, and a horse, and a great variety of other useful appliances and creatures.