“How do you like the idea, Miss Millward,” said I, “of staying several months longer on the island?”
“I am delighted,” answered she. “It is pleasant to see my father improving so rapidly; and the days pass quickly with the work we have to do. You know I like such housework, and have never had much chance to do it. Now here I am in sole charge of all the housekeeping arrangements, nobody to say I must not do this, or must do that. I feel quite as though I were empress, with none to dispute my sway. Ought I not to be contented?”
“I am very glad you are contented,” said I, “and hope you may continue so. For I want to see you happy. Indeed, Miss Millward,” I continued, with a slight tremor in my voice in spite of myself, “having done myself the honor to save you from the sea, I feel somehow responsible for your comfort and welfare, at least, I mean, while you remain on this island, and until you and your father reach civilization and your friends again. And even then I shall--I shall not like entirely to lose sight of you. It gives me pain to think that our ways may then perhaps lie far apart from each other.”
Now there was a twang of maudlin sentimentality in this, which I recognized as I spoke the words, and this was magnified and intensified by the moonlight, and the trembling voice, so that I felt somehow as though I wanted to knock my head against something hard. I somehow felt too that she ought in all consistency to laugh at me. But she did not laugh. And though I could see her clear-cut beautiful profile in the moonlight, there was no sign of even a smile upon it. God bless me! how wonderfully pure and sweet she did look that night.
After a short silence I added, “I hope after we leave the island we shall not become wholly strangers, you and I and your father.”
“Why, Mr. Morgan,” said she, smiling now, and turning her candid eyes to me, “I thought we had just decided not to leave the island for some months. I am very sure that we,--my father and I and you can never become strangers. We must always be the best of friends whatever happens. It is not so easy to forget a good friend as you seem to imagine. And you have surely been one to us,--and especially to my poor father in his helplessness. But the dew is falling fast, and I must now go in. Good night, my friend, my good friend.”