“I think so, sir.”
“You’re talking nonsense,” Mr. Oliphant returned testily. “Nobody can tell anything at all from a photograph. Not a thing!”
“No,” Mrs. Oliphant agreed, wiping her eyes again. “I hope not. I mean I’m sure not.”
“That’s right,” said her husband heartily. “That’s the way to look at it.”
“Yes; isn’t it!” said the sardonic Harlan, as he resumed his reading; and for a time the library was given over to a reflective silence;—the ceiling, fifteen feet from the floor, was too solid a structure for the pacing that had begun overhead to be heard below.
Up and down his room Dan walked and walked. In the few contemporary novels that he had read the hero’s acceptance by a beautiful girl implied general happiness on earth; all the difficulties of mankind seemed to disappear with the happy elimination of those of this favourite twain. Moreover, when friends of his had become engaged there was always joviality; there were congratulations and eager gayeties; there were friendly chaffings from the old stock of jokes on the shelves that afford generation after generation supplies of such humour. Sometimes, as he was growing up, he had thought vaguely of the time when he would be telling people of his own engagement; he had made in his mind momentary sketches of himself, proud, happy, laughing, and a little embarrassed, in a circle of his relatives and friends who would be clamorous with loud felicitations and jocose inquiries. This very vision had come to him on his journey home so vividly that he had chuckled aloud suddenly, in his berth at night, surprising and somewhat abashing himself with the sound.
The picture had not been a successful prophecy he perceived as he walked up and down in his dressing-gown and slippers. Something appeared to have gone wrong somewhere in a mysterious way; and he could not understand what it was, could only pace and grieve, and puzzle himself. Even his talk with Martha Shelby had lacked the stimulating gayety he expected, though she had been “mighty sweet and sympathetic,” as he thought; and as for the interview with his grandmother, he must simply try to forget that! So he told himself, and shivered abruptly, recalling the awfulness of her parting instructions. His mother and father had been kind—“just lovely”—but with them, too, something important had been lacking; he could not think why; and so walked and walked without much satisfaction or relief.
An hour after he had left the library there was a knock on his door; and he opened this tall and heavily panelled walnut barrier to admit his father, who looked a little worried.
“Dan,” he said, coming in;—“I’m afraid I’ve got to get you to do something that won’t be much fun for you.”
“Yes, sir.”