“I said, you know, that I should make you an antidote to those black humours; and you said you hoped I would consign them to the flames.”
“And I still hope so, Jasper.”
“With the best reason in the world! I mean to burn this year’s Diary at the year’s end.”
“Because you—?” Mr. Crisparkle brightens greatly as he thus begins.
“You anticipate me. Because I feel that I have been out of sorts, gloomy, bilious, brain-oppressed, whatever it may be. You said I had been exaggerative. So I have.”
Mr. Crisparkle’s brightened face brightens still more.
“I couldn’t see it then, because I was out of sorts; but I am in a healthier state now, and I acknowledge it with genuine pleasure. I made a great deal of a very little; that’s the fact.”
“It does me good,” cries Mr. Crisparkle, “to hear you say it!”
“A man leading a monotonous life,” Jasper proceeds, “and getting his nerves, or his stomach, out of order, dwells upon an idea until it loses its proportions. That was my case with the idea in question. So I shall burn the evidence of my case, when the book is full, and begin the next volume with a clearer vision.”
“This is better,” says Mr. Crisparkle, stopping at the steps of his own door to shake hands, “than I could have hoped.”