nt the West Indies, yes, and the East ones
too, clean out of my head."

"I hope," say I, anxiously, "that you will never tell any one that I
said _that_. They would think that I was in the habit of calling people
'_beasts_', and indeed--_indeed_, I very seldom use so strong a word,
_even_ to Bobby."

"Well," he says, not heeding my request, not, I am sure, hearing it, and
resuming his walk, "what is done cannot be undone, so there is no use
whining about it, Nancy" (again stopping before me, and this time taking
my face in his two hands). "Will you mind much, or will you not?--do you
ever mind _any thing much_, I wonder?" (eagerly and wistfully scanning
my face, as if trying to read my character through the mask of my pale
skin, and small and unremarkable features). "Well, there is no help for
it--as I did not go then, I must go now."

"Go!" repeat I, panting in horrid surprise, "go where?--to Antigua?"

"Yes, to Antigua."

No need now to dress my voice in the tones of factitious tragedy--no
need to lengthen my face artificially. It feels all of a sudden quite a
yard and a half long. Polly has stopped barking: he is now calling,
"Barb'ra! Barb'ra!" in father's voice, and he hits off the pompous
severity of his tone with such awful accuracy, that did not my eyes
assure me to the contrary, I could swear that my parent was in the room.

After a moment I rise, throw my arms round Sir Roger, and lay my head on
his breast--a most unwonted caress on my part, for we are not a couple
by any means given to endearments.

"Do not go!" I say in a coaxing whisper, "do nothing of the kind!--stay
at home!"

"And will _you_ go instead of me?" he asks with a gentle irony,
stroking, the while, my plaits as delicately as if he were afraid that
they would _come off_, which indeed, _indeed_, they would not.

"By myself," say I, laughing, but not raising my head. "Oh! of course;
nothing I should like better, and I should be so invaluable in mending
the sugar-canes, and keeping the new agent on his P's and Q's, should
not I?"

He laughs.

"Stay!" say I, again whispering, as being more persuasive; "where would
be the use of going _now_? It would be shutting the stable-door after
the steed was stolen, and--" (this in a still lower voice)--"we are
beginning to get on so nicely, too."

"Beginning!" he echoes, with a half-melancholy smile, "only _beginning_?
have not we always got on nicely?"

"And if we are poorer," continue I, in