Charnock did not controvert or explain the manager's supposition. He continued to pack, but perhaps a trifle more slowly than before. "You have got my address, Macdonald?" he said. "You won't lose it, will you?" He shut up the portmanteau and knelt upon it. "You will forward everything that comes--everything without fail?" he insisted. "In all human probability," returned Macdonald, "I will forward nothing at all. For I am thinking you will lose the boat." There was a knock on the door; Charnock's servant brought in a letter. The letter lay upon its face, and the sealed back of the envelope had an official look. "Open it, will you, Macdonald?" said Charnock, as he fastened the straps. "Well, what's it about?" "I cannot tell. It's written in a dialect I do not understand," said the manager, gravely, and Charnock, turning about, saw that he dangled and deliberated upon a long white kid glove. Charnock jumped up and snatched it away. "It's a female's," said the manager, sagely. "It's a woman's," returned Charnock, with indignation. "You are very young," observed Macdonald. "And I'll point out to you that you have torn your letter." Charnock was turning the glove over, and showed the palm at that moment. He smiled, but made no answer. He folded the glove, wrapped it in its envelope, took it out again, and smoothed its creases. Then he folded it once more, held it for a little balanced on his hand, and finally replaced it in the envelope and hid the envelope in his pocket. "Man, but you are _very_ young," remarked Macdonald, "and I'm thinking that you'll lose--" "There's a train to Ronda pretty soon?" interrupted Charnock. "There is," replied Macdonald, drily, "and I'll be particular to mind your address, and forward everything that comes. Eh, but you have paid your passage on the P. and O." Charnock, in spite of that argument, took his seat in the train for Ronda, and travelled up through the forest of cork trees whose foliage split the sunshine, making here a shade, there an alley of light. The foresters were at work stripping the trunks of their bark, and Charnock was in a mood to make parables of the world, so long as they fitted in with and exemplified his own particular purposes and plans. He himself was a forester, and the rough bark he was stripping was Miranda's distress, so it is to be supposed that the bare tree-trunk was Miranda herself; and, to be sure, what simile could be more elegant?