“Didn’t you hear me call out to you from up there?”—she pointed to the cliff above their heads—“when you were sitting in the boat? I called to you to go in after the men.”
“Why?”
“Why! Because I thought you were a lazy boy.”
He laughed. All his brown face gave itself up to laughter—eyes, teeth, lips, cheeks, chin. His whole body seemed to be laughing. The idea of his being lazy seemed to delight his whole spirit.
“You would have been lazy if you hadn’t done what I told you,” said Vere, emphatically, forcing her words through his merriment with determination. “You know you would.”
“I never heard you call, Signorina.”
“You didn’t?”
He shook his head several times, bent down, dipped his fingers in the sea, put them to his lips: “I say it.”
“Really?”
There was a note of disappointment in her voice. She felt dethroned.