t is
to talk to you! Mamma has been so strange, she has looked at me as
though I were saying something very wrong. I have only told her how much
I admired him--just as I have been telling you; is that wrong?"

"Not the least in the world," answered Winthrop, who had at last decided
upon the course he should pursue. "But it won't last long, you know,
it's only a fancy; you have seen so few people, shut up in this one
little place. When you have been about more, your taste will change."

Garda did not pay much heed to these generalities arrayed before her,
nor did he expect that she would. But this was the tone he intended to
take; later she would recall it. All she said now was, "Oh, please stay
ever so long, all the evening; I cannot let you go, now that you are so
good to me." And taking his hand with a caressing little motion, she
laid her soft cheek against it.

"Suppose we walk a while," suggested Winthrop, rising. He said to
himself that perhaps he should feel less like a grandfather if he were
on his feet; perhaps, too, she would treat him less like one.

Garda obeyed him directly. She was as docile as possible. When they
were a dozen yards off, Carlos Mateo began to follow them slowly, taking
very high steps with his thin legs, and pausing carefully before each
one, with his upheld claw in the air, as if considering the exact point
in the sand where he should place it next. They went to the live-oak
avenue. "How long do you think it will hurt me so, hurt me as it does
now--his going away?" the girl asked, sadly.

"Not long," replied Winthrop, in a matter-of-course tone. "It's always
so when we are parted from our friends; perhaps you have never been
parted from a friend before?"

"That is true, I have not," she answered, a little consoled. "But no,"
she went on, in a changed voice, "it's not like that, it's not like
other friends; I cared so much for him! You might all go away, every one
of you, and I shouldn't care as I do now." And with all her figure
drooping, as though it had been struck by a blighting wind, she put her
hand over her eyes again.

"Take my arm," said Winthrop; "we will go down to the landing, where you
can rest on the bench; you are tired out, poor child."

Again she obeyed him without opposition, and they walked on; but her
breath came in long sobs, and she kept her little hand over her eyes,
trusting to his arm to guide her. He felt that it was better that she
should talk of Spenser