Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/315

Rh out at the dangers they had escaped, the gray horizon that was England, the tumbled surface of the sea and the brown smacks that bobbed upon it. Why had he chosen an embarrassed time to make this foreign dash?—unless indeed it was just the dash economic, of which she had often heard and on which, after another look at the gray horizon and the bobbing boats, she was ready to turn round with elation. She replied to him quite in his own manner. "I see—I see." She smiled up at him. "Our affairs are involved."

"That's it"—he returned her smile. "Mine are not quite so bad as yours; for yours are really, my dear man, in a state I can't see through at all. But mine will do—for a mess."

She thought this over. "But is n't France cheaper than England?" England, over there in the thickening gloom, looked just then remarkably dear.

"I dare say—some parts."

"Then can't we live in those parts?"

There was something that for a moment, in satisfaction of this, he had the air of being about to say and yet not saying. What he presently said was: "This very place is one of them."