"It's all there," he said, after an awkward pause, seeing that she did not seem inclined to take any further notice of it.
"Of course it is. Don't I know that?"
"But you have not counted it."
"No; but haven't you said it was all there, and isn't that enough?"
Phil unconsciously drew himself up, and a glad light shone in his eyes. He was proud of her confidence in his word, and prouder still to feel himself not altogether unworthy of her good opinion.
"The time we have been here, and all the queer things that have happened to us since we left Oakdale, seems like a dream," he said, presently—"a strange, exciting dream."
"Does it?" She looked up at him in undisguised surprise. "It does not seem so to me; it is all real—as real as my life, as the sea, as the earth—but that is because I am a girl, I suppose, and girls are not so forgetful as boys are, so I've heard people say."
You would never have thought her a child to look at her as she spoke. Her eyes were so earnest, her voice so grave, her manner so composed and considering.
Her fun and prattle with Bess, her little quarrels and tart replies, her generous, happy, winning, self-willed ways, were as if they had never been, and in their place came resignation, reserve, pride and a little—only a little—regret and sorrow.
"I have something for you," she said, after another awkward pause—"something that will help you to remember me when I am gone."