"O, _don't_, Fanny, or I can't go; and I'm really very hungry."

"Well, I won't then," said Mrs. Ellison, seeing the rainy cloud in
Kitty's eyes. "Go just as you are, and don't mind me." And so Kitty
went, gathering courage at every pace, and sitting down opposite Mr.
Arbuton with a vivid color to be sure, but otherwise lion-bold. He had
been upbraiding the stars that had thrust him further and further at
every step into the intimacy of these people, as he called them to
himself. It was just twenty-four hours, he reflected, since he had met
them, and resolved to have nothing to do with them, and in that time the
young lady had brought him under the necessity of apologizing for a
blunder of her own; he had played the eavesdropper to her talk; he had
sentimentalized the midnight hour with her; they had all taken a morning
ride together; and he had ended by having Mrs. Ellison sprain her ankle
and faint in his arms. It was outrageous; and what made it worse was
that decency obliged him to take henceforth a regretful, deprecatory
attitude towards Mrs. Ellison, whom he liked least among these people.
So he sat vindictively eating an enormous breakfast, in a sort of angry
abstraction, from which Kitty's coming roused him to say that he hoped
Mrs. Ellison was better.

"O, very much! It's just a sprain."

"A sprain may be a very annoying thing," said Mr. Arbuton dismally.
"Miss Ellison," he cried, "I've been nothing but an affliction to your
party since I came on board this boat!"

"Do you think evil genius of our party would be too harsh a term?"
suggested Kitty.