“Quite so; but you shall know all by and by. I have got mackerel for you. It was a favorite dish of yours long ago, and you shall taste such mutton as your Welsh mountains can't equal. I got the haunch from the Ardennes a week ago, and kept it for you.”
“I wish I deserved such generous fare; but I have only an invalid's stomach,” said Glencore, smiling faintly.
“You shall be reported well, and fit for duty to-day, or my name is not George Harcourt. The strongest and toughest fellow that ever lived could n't stand up against the united effects of low diet and low spirits. To act generously and think generously, you must live generously, take plenty of exercise, breathe fresh air, and know what it is to be downright weary when you go to bed,—not bored, mark you, for that's another thing. Now, here comes the soup, and you shall tell me whether turtle be not the best restorative a man ever took after twelve hours of the road.”
Whether tempted by the fare, or anxious to gratify the hospitable wishes of his host, Glencore ate heartily, and drank what for his abstemious habit was freely, and, so far as a more genial air and a more ready smile went, fully justified Harcourt's anticipations.
“By Jove! you 're more like yourself than I have seen you this many a day,” said the Colonel, as they drew their chairs towards the fire, and sat with that now banished, but ever to be regretted, little spider-table, that once emblematized after-dinner blessedness, between them. “This reminds one of long ago, Glencore, and I don't see why we cannot bring to the hour some of the cheerfulness that we once boasted.”
A faint, very faint smile, with more of sorrow than joy in it, was the other's only reply.
“Look at the thing this way, Glencore,” said Harcourt, eagerly. “So long as a man has, either by his fortune or by his personal qualities, the means of benefiting others, there is a downright selfishness in shutting himself up in his sorrow, and saying to the world, 'My own griefs are enough for me; I 'll take no care or share in yours.' Now, there never was a fellow with less of this selfishness than you—”
“Do not speak to me of what I was, my dear friend. There's not a plank of the old craft remaining. The name alone lingers, and even that will soon be extinct.”
“So, then, you still hold to this stern resolution? Shall I tell you what I think of it?”
“Perhaps you had better not do so,” said Glencore, sternly.