"Oh, this is nothing yet."
"No indeed--to what it will be."
"You're not--and it's vain to pretend," said dear old Susie, who had
been taking her in, "as sound and strong as I insist on having you."
"Insist, insist--the more the better. But the day I _look_ as sound and
strong as that, you know," Milly went on--"on that day I shall be just
sound and strong enough to take leave of you sweetly for ever. That's
where one is," she continued thus agreeably to embroider, "when even
one's _most_ 'beaux moments' aren't such as to qualify, so far as
appearance goes, for anything gayer than a handsome cemetery. Since
I've lived all these years as if I were dead, I shall die, no doubt, as
if I were alive--which will happen to be as you want me. So, you see,"
she wound up, "you'll never really know where I am. Except indeed when
I'm gone; and then you'll only know where I'm not."
"I'd die _for_ you," said Susan Shepherd after a moment.
"'Thanks awfully'! Then stay here for me."
"But we can't be in London for August, nor for many of all these next
weeks."
"Then we'll go back."