“The very deuce seems to have happened,” said I, angrily—though why I should have felt angry, heaven only knows. “First you turn yourself into a Royal Academy picture with that unspeakable umbrella of yours and the trumpery blue sky and sunshine, and make my sentimental soul ache; and then you—”
“It’s a very pretty umbrella,” said Carlotta, looking upwards at it demurely.
“Give it to me,” I said.
She yielded it with her usual docility. I cast it upon the desert. Being open it gave one or two silly rebounds, then lay still. Carlotta reined up her mule.
“Oh-h!” she said, in her old way.
I dismounted hurriedly, and helped her down and passed my arm through the two bridles.
“My dear child,” said I, “what is the meaning of all this? Here we have been living for months the most tranquil and unruffled existence, and now suddenly you begin to talk about dream-cities and the impossibility of getting there, and I turn angry and heave parasols about Africa. What is the meaning of it?”
The most extraordinary part of it was that I should be treating Carlotta as a grown-up woman, after the fashion of the hero of a modern French novel. Perhaps I was younger than I thought.
She kept her eyes fixed downward.
“Why are you angry with me?” she asked in a low voice.