"Why should you care about it?"
"Well; I don't know. A fellow has a sort of feeling about a girl when he has been spooning on her himself. He doesn't want to think that another fellow is to pick her up immediately."
"Dog in the manger, you mean."
"You may call it that if you like. You never cared for any young woman, I suppose?"
"Oh, haven't I! Lots of 'em. But if I couldn't get a girl myself I never cared who had her. What's the good of being selfish?"
"What's the good of lying?" said Sir Francis, propounding a great doctrine in sociology. "If I feel cut up what's the use of saying I don't,—unless I want to deceive the man I'm talking to? If I feel that I'd like a girl to be punished for her impertinence, what's the use of my pretending to myself that I don't want it? If I wish a person to be injured, what's the use of saying I wish them all the good in the world,—unless there's something to be gained by my saying it? Now I don't care to tell you lies. I am quite willing that you should know all the truth about me. Therefore I tell you that I'm not best pleased that this minx should have already picked up another man."
"He has the devil of a temper," said Dick Ross, wishing to make the matter as pleasant as possible to his friend.
"So your Miss Holt is married," Ross said to his friend on the day after the ceremony.
"Yes; she is married, and her troubles have now to begin. I wonder whether she has told him the little episode of our loves."
"You may be sure of that," said Dick.