ux has
resolved to row Miss Beatrice Jocelyn himself.

He rows as he does everything, easily and gracefully, and Bee watches
him with happy blue eyes as they go gliding over the warm sea. How still
it is to-day! Beyond the grey rocks and yellow sands they can see the
golden harvest fields full of standing sheaves, and still farther away
there are low hills faintly outlined through the hot mist. The little
town, with its irregularly-built terraces, looks dazzlingly white in
the sunshine; but the church, standing on high ground, lifts a red spire
into the hazy blue.

"I could live on the sea!" says Bee ecstatically. "You don't know what
it costs me to come out of a boat; I always want this lovely gliding
feeling to go on for ever. Don't you?"

"I like it awfully," he replies; "but then there are other things that
I want to do by-and-by. I mean to try my hand at tiger-shooting when I
go out to the governor."

"But, oh, Empey, it'll be a long time before you have to go out to
India!"

Her red mouth drops a little at the corners, and her dimples become
invisible. He looks at her with a gleam of mischief in his lazy eyes.

"What do you call a long time?" he asks. "Just a year or two, that's
nothing. Never mind, Bee, you'll get on very well without me."

"Oh, Empey!"

The great blue eyes glisten; and Claude is penitent in an instant.

"You ridiculous old chap!" he says gaily. "Haven't you been told
thousands of times that my dad is your guardian, and as good as a father
to you? And do you suppose that I'd go to India and leave you behind?
You're coming too, you know, and you'll sit perched up on the back of an
elephant to see me shoot tigers. What a time we'll have out there, Bee!"

"Do you really mean it?" she cries, with a rapturous face; blue eyes
shining like sapphires, cheeks aglow with the richest rose.

"Of course I do. It was all arranged, years ago, by our two governors; I
thought Aunt Hetty had told you. But I say, Bee, when the time _does_
come, I hope you won't make a fuss about leaving England!"

"Not a bit of it," she says sturdily. "I shall like to see the Ganges,
and the big water-lilies, and the alligators. But what's to become of
Dolly?"

"I don't know; I suppose she'll have to stay with Aunt Hetty. You belong
to _us_, you see, old girl; so you and I shall never be parted."

"No, never be parted," she echoes, looking out across the calm waters
with eyes full of innocent joy.

CHAPTER II.