"I was _drawing the long bow_!" I stop in baffled rage and misery.

I stand stock-still, with the long, dying grass wetly and limply clasping my ankles.

To my surprise he stops too.
"I wish you were _dead_!" I say tersely, and it is not a figure of speech.

For the moment I do honestly wish it.
"Do you ?" he answers, throwing me back a look of hardly inferior animosity; "I dare say I do not much mind." A little pause, during which we eye each other, like two fighting-cocks.

"Even if I _were_ dead," he says, in a low voice--"mind, I do not blame you for wishing it--sometimes I wish it myself--but even if I _were_, I do not see how that would hinder Sir Roger and Mrs.Huntley from corresponding." "They _do not_ correspond," cry I, violently; "it is a falsehood!" Then, with a quick change of thought and tone: "But if they do, I--I--do not mind! I--I--am very glad--if Roger likes it! There is no harm in it." "Not the slightest." "Do you _always_ stay at home ?" cry I, in a fury, goaded out of all politeness and reserve by the surface false acquiescence of his tone; "do you _never_ go away?
I _wish_ you would! I wish"-- (speaking between laughing and crying)--"that you could take your abbey up on your back, as a snail does its shell, and march off with it into another county." "But unfortunately I cannot." "What have I done to you ?" I cry, falling from anger to reproach, "that you take such delight in hurting me?
You can be pleasant enough to--to other people.