ds."

"Except for the diamonds, as you remark. And therefore when a man has
got his fill of diamonds, he is likely to leave."

"His fill of diamonds!" said Augusta Hall.

"Shouldn't you like to try your fill of diamonds?" asked Blake.

"Not at all," said Evelina. "I'd rather have strawberries and cream."

"I think I should like diamonds best," said Mary. Whereupon Evelina
suggested that her younger sister was a greedy little creature.

"As soon as you've got your fill of diamonds, which won't take
more than six months longer," suggested Mr Hall, "you'll come back
again?"

"Not exactly. I have an idea of going up the country across the
Zambesi. I've a notion that I should like to make my way out
somewhere in the Mediterranean,--Egypt, for instance, or Algiers."

"What!--across the equator? You'd never do that alive?"

"Things of that kind have been done. Stanley crossed the continent."

"But not from south to north. I don't believe in that. You had better
remain at Kimberley and get more diamonds."

"He'd be with diamonds like the boy with the bacon," said the
clergyman; "when prepared for another wish, he'd have more than he
could eat."

"To tell the truth," said John Gordon, "I don't quite know what I
should do. It would depend perhaps on what somebody else would join
me in doing. My life was very lonely at Kimberley, and I do not love
being alone."

"Then, why don't you take a wife?" said Montagu Blake, very loudly,
as though he had hit the target right in the bull's-eye. He so spoke
as to bring the conversation to an abrupt end. Mr Whittlestaff
immediately looked conscious. He was a man who, on such an occasion,
could not look otherwise than conscious. And the five girls, with all
of whom the question of the loves of John Gordon and Mary Lawrie had
been fully discussed, looked conscious. Mary Lawrie was painfully
conscious; but endeavoured to hide it, not unsuccessfully. But in
her endeavour she had to look unnaturally stern,--and was conscious,
too, that she did that. Mr Hall, whose feelings of romance were not
perhaps of the highest order, looked round on Mr Whittlestaff and
Mary Lawrie. Montagu Blake felt that he had achieved a triumph.
"Yes," said he, "if those are your feelings, why don't you take a
wife?"

"One man may not be so happy as another," said Gordon, laughing. "You
have suited yourself admirably, and seem to think it quite easy for a
man to make a selection."

"Not quite such a sel