After the first moment or two that lady realized the situation completely. "I suppose," she said, "we have been down here about two days. I am quite faint with hunger. I have often read that candles, under these terrible circumstances, are sustaining. What a good thing we have got the candles."
Dicky squeezed my hand nervously, but our chaperone had slept off the eucalyptus and had no longer one cannibal thought.
"I don't think it is time for candles yet," he said reassuringly. "You have been asleep, you know, Mrs. Portheris."
"If you have eaten them already, I consider that you have taken an unfair advantage, a very unfair advantage."
"Here is mine!" exclaimed Dicky nobly. "I hope I can deny myself, Mrs. Portheris, to that extent."
"And mine," I echoed; "but really, Mrs. Portheris----"
Another pressure of Dicky's hand reminded me--I am ashamed to confess it--that if Mrs. Portheris was bent upon the unnecessary consumption of Roman tallow there was nothing in her past treatment of either of us to induce us to prevent her. The dictates of humanity, I know, should have influenced us otherwise, in connection with tallow, but they seemed for the moment to have faded as completely out of our bosoms as they did out of the early Roman persecutors! It seemed to me that all my country's wrongs at the hands of Mrs. Portheris rose up and clamoured to be avenged, and Dicky told me afterward that he felt just the same way.
"Then I have done you an injustice," she continued; "I apologize, I am sure, and I find that I have my own candle, thank you. It is adhering to the side of my bonnet."
"Perhaps I ought to try and wait a little longer," Mrs. Portheris hesitated, "but I feel such a sinking, and I assure you I have fallen away. My garments are quite loose."
"Of course it depends," said Dicky scientifically, "upon the amount of carbon the system has in reserve. Personally I think I can hold out a little longer. I had an excellent breakfast this m----, the day we came here. But if I felt a sinking----"
"Have you--have you _begun_?" I exclaimed in agony, while Dicky shook in silence.
"I have," replied Mrs. Portheris hurriedly; "where--where is the eucalyptus? Ah! I have it!"
"_Ben-en-euh!_ It is nutritive, I am sure, but it requires a cordial."