Both the tone and substance of this discourse proved slightly startling
to its hearer. They carried the conversation into regions transcendental;
and to his blissful laziness, the rarefied air of those regions was
unwelcome. To breathe it demanded exertion. So he said, chaffingly:

"Do I interfere with your thinking? I hope not. But if I offend that way,
speak but a word and I disappear like a shot."

"Oh! no," she answered. "How could you interfere? You are part of it. You
started it, you see, because you are going to India."

Whereat, failing to catch the sequence of ideas, male vanity plumed
itself, tickled to the point of amusement. For was not she a child after
all, transparently simple and candid, and very much a woman-child at
that! Tom turning on his side raised himself on one elbow, smiling at her
with easy good-nature.

"How charming of you to adopt me as a special object of thought, and care
so much about my going."

But patronage proved short-lived. The girl's colour deepened, but her
eyes dwelt on him coldly.

"I have only been thinking how fortunate you are, and seeing pictures in
my mind of what you will see which will be new to you--and--and
remembering."

"Oh! of course, I am lucky, tremendously lucky," he hastened to declare,
laughing a little wryly. "Such a journey is a liberal education in