“Have you?” said John; and a delicious tear came to the foolish fellow’s eye. “It was too good of you to think of me at all.” “Of course I could not help thinking of you,” said Kate, “after what you said. Perhaps you will not think my advice of much value; but I don’t think--I don’t really think you ought to do it. I feel that it would be wrong.” “There is no one in the world whose advice would be so much to me,” cried foolish John. “My sight is clouded by--by self-interest, and habit, and a thousand things. I have never opened my heart to any one but you--and how I presumed to trouble you with it I can’t tell,” he went on, gazing at her with fond eyes, which Kate found it difficult to meet. “Oh, that is natural enough. Don’t you remember what you said?” she answered, softly; “what you did for me--and that moment when you said we might have died;--we should be like--brother and sister--all our lives.” “Not that,” said John, with a little start; “but---- Yes, I hold by my claim. I wish I had done something to deserve it, though. If I had known it was you----” “How could you possibly know it was me when you did not know there was such a person as me in the world?” said Kate. “Don’t talk such nonsense, please.” “No; was it possible that there was once a time when I did not know that there was you in the world? What a cold world it must have been!--how sombre and miserable!” cried the enthusiast. “I can’t realise it now.” “Oh, please!--what nonsense you do talk, to be sure!” cried Kate; and then she gave her pretty head a little shake to dissipate the blush and the faint mist of some emotion that had been stealing over her eyes, and took up the interrupted strain. “Now that you do know there is a me, you must pay attention to me. I have thought over it a great deal. You must not do it--indeed you must not. A man who is not quite certain, how can he teach others? It would be like me steering--now there! Oh, I am sure, I beg your pardon. Who was to know that nasty bank would turn up again?’ “Never mind,” said John, when he had repeated the same little performance which had signalised their upward course; “that is nothing--except that it interrupted what you were saying. Tell me again what you have thought.” “But you never mean to be guided by me all the same,” said Kate, incautiously, though she must have foreseen, if she had taken a moment to think, that such a remark would carry her subject too far. “Ah! how can you say so--how can you think so?” cried John, crossing his oars across the boat, and leaning over them, with his eyes fixed upon her, “when you must know I am guided by your every look. Don’t be angry with me. It is so hard to look at you and not say all that is in my heart. If you would let me think that I might--identify myself altogether--I mean, do only what pleased you--I mean, think of you as caring a little----”