“How do you know but I’d like that?” said Calvert with a mocking laugh. “How do you know but I want the very force of a contrast to bring my own merits more conspicuously forward?”
“And make them declare when we went away, that it is inconceivable why Mr. Calvert should have made a companion of that tiresome Mr. Loyd—so low-spirited and so dreary, and so uninteresting in every way?”
“Just so! And that the whole thing has but one explanation—in Calvert’s kindness and generosity; who, seeing the helplessness of this poor depressed creature, has actually sacrificed himself to vivify and cheer him. As we hear of the healthy people suffering themselves to be bled that they might impart their vigorous heart’s blood to a poor wretch in the cholera.”
“But I’m not blue yet,” said Loyd laughing. “I almost think I could get on with my own resources.”
“Of course you might, in the fashion you do at present; but that is not life—or at least it is only the life of a vegetable. Mere existence and growth are not enough for a man who has hopes to fulfil, and passions to exercise, and desires to expand into accomplishments, not to speak of the influence that everyone likes to wield over his fellows. But, come along, jump into the boat, and see these girls! I want you; for there is one of them I scarcely understand as yet, and as I am always taken up with her sick sister, I’ve had no time to learn more about her.”
“Well,” said Loyd, “not to offer opposition to the notion of the tie that binds us, I consent.” And sending back to the cottage all the details of his pursuit, he accompanied Calvert to the lake.
“The invalid girl I shall leave to your attention, Loyd,” said the other, as he pulled across the water. “I like her the best; but I am in no fear of rivalry in that quarter, and I want to see what sort of stuff the other is made of. So, you understand, you are to devote yourself especially to Florence, taking care, when opportunity serves, to say all imaginable fine things about me—my talents, my energy, my good spirits, and so forth. I’m serious, old fellow, for I will own to you I mean to marry one of them, though which, I have not yet decided on.”
Loyd laughed heartily—far more heartily than in his quiet habit was his wont—and said, “Since when has this bright idea occurred to you?”
“I’ll tell you,” said the other gravely. “I have for years had a sort of hankering kind of half attachment to a cousin of mine. We used to quarrel, and make up, and quarrel again; but somehow, just as careless spendthrifts forget to destroy the old bill when they give a renewal, and at last find a swingeing sum hanging over them they had never dreamed of, Sophy and I never entirely cancelled our old scores, but kept them back to be demanded at some future time. And the end has been, a regular rupture between us, and she is going to be married at the end of this month, and, not to be outdone on the score of indifference, I should like to announce my own happiness, since that’s the word for it, first.”
“But have you means to marry?”