'Yes,' said Nan at once, 'and there is another like that that the collier-boats can't stand. If you call out to a collier, "There's a rat in your chains" he'd drive his schooner ashore to get after you.'
'I suppose you have tried,' said her mother, with calm dignity.
'I believe Nan spends most of her time,' said the Beauty, 'in making mud-pies with the boys in Shoreham Harbour.'
'Never you mind, Nan,' her brother said to encourage her. 'Next time we go to Newhaven, you'll call out to the colliers, "There's a rat in your chains," and I'll stop behind a wall and watch them beating you.'
All during that dinner Nan was both amused and amusing, until a trifling little incident occurred. She and Frank King on the other side of the table had almost monopolised the conversation, although quite unwittingly; and everybody seemed to regard this as a matter of course. Now it happened that Madge, who sat next her betrothed, made some slight remark to him. Perhaps he did not hear. At all events, he did not answer, but addressed Nan instead, with reference to something she had just been saying about lifeboats. Instantly, a hurt expression came over Madge's face, and as instantly Nan saw it. From that moment she grew more reserved. She avoided addressing herself directly to Captain Frank King. She devoted herself chiefly to her mother; and when, at the end of dinner, they adjourned in a body to the billiard-room (with the happy indifference of youth) she followed Lady Beresford up to the drawing-room and would herself make tea for her.
'Do you know, Nan,' she said, quite plainly, 'that whenever you are in the room Frank pays no attention to any one else?'
'I thought he was doing his best to amuse everybody at dinner,' Nan said—though she did not raise her eyes. 'He told some very good stories.'
'Yes, to you,' Madge insisted. Then she added, 'You know I like it. I hope he will always be good friends with all the family: for you see, Nan, it will be lonely for me at Kingscourt for a while, and of course I should like to have somebody from Brighton always in the house. And I know he admires you very much. He's always talking about your character, and your disposition, and your temperament, as if he had been studying you like a doctor. I suppose I've got no character, or he would talk about that sometimes. I don't understand it—that talking about something inside you, as if it was something separate from yourself; and calling it all kinds of sentiments and virtues, as if it was clockwork you couldn't see. I don't see anything like that in you, Nan—except that you are very kind, you know—but not so different from other people—as he seems to think.'
'It doesn't much matter what he thinks, does it?' suggested Nan, gently.
'Oh no, of course not,' Madge said, promptly. 'He said I was a very good skater, considering the horrid condition of the ice. They have a large lake at Kingscourt.' Then after a pause, 'Nan, where did you learn all that about the lighthouses and the birds at night?'