‘Do you design to marry her?’
‘My dear fellow, no.’
‘Do you design to pursue her?’
‘My dear fellow, I don’t design anything. I have no design whatever. I am incapable of designs. If I conceived a design, I should speedily abandon it, exhausted by the operation.’
‘Oh Eugene, Eugene!’
‘My dear Mortimer, not that tone of melancholy reproach, I entreat. What can I do more than tell you all I know, and acknowledge my ignorance of all I don’t know! How does that little old song go, which, under pretence of being cheerful, is by far the most lugubrious I ever heard in my life?
“Away with melancholy,
Nor doleful changes ring
On life and human folly,
But merrily merrily sing
Fal la!”
Don’t let us sing Fal la, my dear Mortimer (which is comparatively unmeaning), but let us sing that we give up guessing the riddle altogether.’
‘Are you in communication with this girl, Eugene, and is what these people say true?’
‘I concede both admissions to my honourable and learned friend.’