"For how many, John? For my mother and--ah, you are so good, more like my brother than my cousin--for you, perhaps, a little; but what is it to anybody else in the world whether I smile or sigh? It does not matter, however," she said, flinging back her head; "there it is, and I can't help it. If you smile at me I must smile back again--and so we make friends; and already I get a great deal of advice about little Pippo. If we live here till he grows up, the same thing will happen as at the Cottage. We will require to account to everybody for what we do with him--for the school he goes to, and all he does; to explain why he has one kind of training or another; and, in short, all that I ran away from: the world wherever one goes seems to be so much the same." "The world is very much the same everywhere; and you cannot get out of it were you to take refuge in a cave on the hill. The best thing is generally to let it know all that can be known, and so save the multitude of guesses it always makes." Elinor looked at him for a moment with her lips pressed tightly together, and a light in her eyes; then she looked away across the water to the golden hills, and said nothing; but there was a great deal in that look of eager contradiction, yet forced agreement, of determination above all, with which right and wrong had nothing to do. "Elinor," he said, "do you mean that child to grow up here between your mother and you--in ignorance of all that there is in the world besides you two?" "That child!" she cried. "John, I think you dislike my boy; for, of course, it is Pippo you mean." "I wish you would not call him by that absurd name." "You are hard to please," she said, with an angry laugh. "I think it is a very sweet little name." "The child will not always be a baby," said John. "Oh, no: I suppose if we all live long enough he will some time be a--possibly disagreeable man, and punish us well for all the care we have spent upon him," Elinor said. "I don't want to make you angry, Elinor----" "No, I don't suppose you do. You have been very nice to me, John. You have neither scolded me nor given me good advice. I never expected you would have been so forbearing. But I have always felt you must mean to give me a good knock at the end." "You do me great injustice," he said, much wounded. "You know that I think only of what is best for you--and the child." They were approaching the shore, and Mrs. Dennistoun's white cap was visible in the waning light, looking out for them from the door. Elinor said hastily, "And the child? I don't think that you care much for the child." "There you are mistaken, Elinor. I did not perhaps at first: but I acknowledge that a little thing like that does somehow creep into one's heart."