He reddened, and, in an irritable manner, told me that I had better mind my own business! Huffed at his ungraciousness, I turned resentfully away. Almost immediately after, I reminded myself of his confusion, his strange manner of entering a clean bed with his clothes on, his jealous avoidance of the light, his affectation of modesty, his peculiar suppleness and mincing gait, and the odd style of his figure. These things shaped themselves rapidly into proofs that Dick was not what he represented himself to be. True, he had a boy’s name, he wore boy’s clothes, he had been a cabin-boy; but such a strange boy I had never seen. He talked far too much and too fluently, he was too tricky, too nimble, somehow. No, I was convinced he could _not_ be a boy! I sat up triumphantly, and cried out with the delight of a discoverer:-- ‘I know! I know! Dick, you are a girl!’ Nevertheless, when he faced me, and unblushingly admitted the accusation, it frightened me; and I sprang out of bed as though I had been scorched! ‘What,’ I exclaimed, ‘do you mean to say you are a girl?’ ‘Yes, I am,’ said she, turning pale, as she became infected with my excitement. Perplexed at this astounding confirmation of what, after all, had been only a surmise of playful malice, I stammeringly demanded,-- ‘Well, what _is_ your name, then? It cannot be Dick, for that belongs to a boy.’ ‘I am Alice Heaton. There, now, you have my whole secret!’ she said with asperity. ‘Alice Heaton!’ I echoed, quite confounded at the feminine name; and I reproachfully asked, ‘If you are a girl, say, what do you mean by coming into my bed, and passing yourself off as a boy?’ She had kept up bravely so far, but she now answered me with tears and sobs, and every doubt of her sex vanished, while I was in such a medley of emotions that I stood like one utterly bereft of sense, not knowing what to do. Presently, she said, ‘Come, let us dress, and I will tell you all about it.’ I lost no time in doing what she advised; and, after taking a turn or two in the yard, returned to find her ready for me. Now that her sex was revealed, I wondered that I had been so blind as not to perceive it before, for, in every movement, there was unmistakeable femininity. Alice made me sit down, and the substance of the story she now told me was as follows: