Paul dropped his novel and rose into a half-sitting posture. A sudden pallor overspread his countenance: his lips trembled.
"You—you—want to take me back—to the North Pole!" he cried, with sudden terror.
"No, not to the Pole, child," answered Narve, soothingly. "Mr. Tulstrup has offered me a place in England, where both you and I can live without danger to health. I want you to come with me."
Paul listened intently, with fear and suspicion depicted in his features.
"Ah, that is a foxy plan of yours," he exclaimed, jumping up and darting across the floor: "don't you suppose I know how you are pining for your delightful whale-hunts and eider-ducks and fish-smell? If you get me so far, you will soon get me back into the very grip of Death, from which, as you say, you saved me. But I am not such a child as you think. I have friends here, and I have found health and life here, and I am not going away to accommodate anybody."
He had worked himself up into such a passion that he could not keep the tears back; and, being ashamed of his weakness, he sauntered into the sleeping-room, flung himself on his bed, and buried his face in the pillows. Narve, cut to the quick by his suspicion, stood long listening to his half-choked sobs. All the tenderness which he had felt for him from his earliest years welled up from the depth of his heart; and, full of repentance for the grief he had caused him, he sat down on the bed, and patiently endured the pettish rebuffs with which his caresses and overtures for peace were received. He reproached himself for having so bluntly stated his proposition, instead of gradually preparing his brother for it; and he resolved in future to use more discretion. But his recollection of his brother's tears and terror made him reluctant to return to the subject again. It seemed a cowardly thing for him as the stronger (he could never quite realize the thought that he was now the weaker) to inflict pain upon one who, in his father's dying hour, had been commended to his care. And so the days went by, summer advanced, and the opportune moment for reopening the subject never came. The Tulstrups went to the country earlier than usual, and left Paul in desolation. And it required no great acuteness, on Narve's part, to discover that Miss Ida constituted to him the most salubrious element in the American climate. This observation made it seem doubly cruel to insist upon the sacrifice.
It was about the middle of June. The heat had come with a rush and scattered fashionable New York toward all the points of the compass. That part which remained on Manhattan Island was decidedly uncomfortable. Only a few tropical characters luxuriated in the burn-
