Marley had a curious intuition that Lavinia was a little jealous of Weston. He immediately sought to allay the feeling with this argument:
“You see, when a man does all for a fellow that Jim has done for me, and when you have lived with him, and shared your haversack with him, and he with you, like two soldier comrades, you get right down to the bottom of him. And I want you to know him, dear, I know you’ll like him.”
Lavinia was silent, and Marley had a fear that she might not accept Weston quite so readily.
“He has done me a world of good,” he went on. “He has taught me much, he has corrected my reckoning in more ways than one. He has taught me much about books; and he has taught me to look sanely on a life that isn’t, he says, always truthfully reflected in books. And besides all, if it hadn’t been for him, if he had not kept me at it and urged me on, I think I should have been doomed for ever to remain a poor newspaper man.”
“Don’t you like newspaper work?” she asked with a shade of disappointment in her tone.
“I did, but I like it less every day. It’s a hard and unsatisfactory life, and it has no promise in it. A man very soon reaches its highest point, and then he must be content to stay there. It’s the easiest thing for a young fellow to get a start in, if he’s bright; I suppose I’m making more money than any of the young lawyers in Chicago; but because it is so easy is the very reason why it is hardly worth while. Things that are easily won are not worth striving for.”
“And you’re going to get out of it?”
“Yes, as soon as I can. As soon as I can, I’m going to get into the law. When Weston first began urging me to keep up my studies, and when finally he made me go to the night law school, I consented chiefly because I had always felt the chagrin of defeat in having been compelled to give it up; lately, I’ve begun to see things differently, and I’ve determined to carry out my first intention and get into the law somehow. Of course, it’s going to be hard. And one has to have a pull there as everywhere else in these days.”
Marley was silent for a moment and, Lavinia thought, a little depressed. She watched him sympathetically, and yet she was a little troubled by a sense of detachment. She felt that Weston was now more closely associated with Marley’s struggle than she, and she was disturbed, too, by the disappointment of finding that his struggles were not at all ended.
“Weston says,” Marley went on presently, “that newspaper work is a good stepping-stone, and by it I may be able to arrange for some place in the law which will give me the start I want.”