‘Part? what do you mean?’

Apparently it required a yet vaster effort to pronounce an explanation.  The doleful look, the superhuman indifference, were repeated in due order:  sound, a little more distinct, uttered the words: 

‘We cannot be as we have been, in England!’ and then the cheerful martyr took a few steps farther.

’Why, you don’t mean to say you’re going to give me up, and not be friends with me, because we’ve come back to England?’ cried the girl in a rapid breath, eyeing him seriously.

Most conscientiously he did not mean it! but he replied with the quietest negative.

‘No?’ she mimicked him.  ’Why do you say “No” like that?  Why are you so mysterious, Evan?  Won’t you promise me to come and stop with us for weeks?  Haven’t you said we would ride, and hunt, and fish together, and read books, and do all sorts of things?’

He replied with the quietest affirmative.

‘Yes?  What does “Yes!” mean?’ She lifted her chest to shake out the dead-alive monosyllable, as he had done.  ’Why are you so singular this morning, Evan?  Have I offended you?  You are so touchy!’

The slur on his reputation for sensitiveness induced the young man to attempt being more explicit.

‘I mean,’ he said, hesitating; ’why, we must part.  We shall not see each other every day.  Nothing more than that.’  And away went the cheerful martyr in sublimest mood.

‘Oh! and that makes you, sorry?’ A shade of archness was in her voice.

The girl waited as if to collect something in her mind, and was now a patronizing woman.

’Why, you dear sentimental boy!  You don’t suppose we could see each other every day for ever?’

It was perhaps the cruelest question that could have been addressed to the sentimental boy from her mouth.  But he was a cheerful martyr!

‘You dear Don Doloroso!’ she resumed.  ’I declare if you are not just like those young Portugals this morning; and over there you were such a dear English fellow; and that’s why I liked you so much!  Do change!  Do, please, be lively, and yourself again.  Or mind; I’ll call you Don Doloroso, and that shall be your name in England.  See there!—­that’s—­that’s? what’s the name of that place?  Hoy!  Mr. Skerne!’ She hailed the boatswain, passing, ‘Do tell me the name of that place.’

Mr. Skerne righted about to satisfy her minutely, and then coming up to Evan, he touched his hat, and said: 

’I mayn’t have another opportunity—­we shall be busy up there—­of thankin’ you again, sir, for what you did for my poor drunken brother Bill, and you may take my word I won’t forget it, sir, if he does; and I suppose he’ll be drowning his memory just as he was near drowning himself.’

Evan muttered something, grimaced civilly, and turned away.  The girl’s observant brows were moved to a faintly critical frown, and nodding intelligently to the boatswain’s remark, that the young gentleman did not seem quite himself, now that he was nearing home, she went up to Evan, and said: