So Mara pressed Sally with the old-times request to stay and sleep with her; for these two, the only young girls in so lonely a neighborhood, had no means of excitement or dissipation beyond this occasional sleeping together--by which is meant, of course, lying awake all night talking.
When they were alone together in their chamber, Sally let down her long black hair, and stood with her back to Mara brushing it. Mara sat looking out of the window, where the moon was making a wide sheet of silver-sparkling water. Everything was so quiet that the restless dash of the tide could be plainly heard. Sally was rattling away with her usual gayety.
"And so the launching is to come off next Thursday. What shall you wear?"
"Well, I shall try and finish my blue merino for the occasion. What fun it will be! I never was on a ship when it was launched, and I think it will be something perfectly splendid!"
"But doesn't it sometimes seem sad to think that after all this Moses will leave us to be gone so long?"
"What do I care?" said Sally, tossing back her long hair as she brushed it, and then stopping to examine one of her eyelashes.
"Sally dear, you often speak in that way," said Mara, "but really and seriously, you do yourself great injustice. You could not certainly have been going on as you have these six months past with a man you did not care for."
"Well, I do care for him, 'sort o','" said Sally; "but is that any reason I should break my heart for his going?--that's too much for any man."
"But, Sally, you _must_ know that Moses loves you."
"I'm not so sure," said Sally, freakishly tossing her head and laughing.
"If he did not," said Mara, "why has he sought you so much, and taken every opportunity to be with you? I'm sure I've been left here alone hour after hour, when my only comfort was that it was because my two best friends loved each other, as I know they must some time love some one better than they do me."
The most practiced self-control must fail some time, and Mara's voice faltered on these last words, and she put her hands over her eyes. Sally turned quickly and looked at her, then giving her hair a sudden fold round her shoulders, and running to her friend, she kneeled down on the floor by her, and put her arms round her waist, and looked up into her face with an air of more gravity than she commonly used.