Maitland smiled, and was silent.
“I shall have a fever—I know I shall—if I don't take something. There's a singing in my head now like a chime of bells, and the back of my throat feels like a coal-bunker in one of those vile steamers. How you stand it I don't know; but to be sure you 've not been talking as I have.” The old Commodore rose, but when he reached the door, seemed suddenly to have remembered something; for he placed his hand to his forehead, and said, “What a brain I have! here was I walking away without ever so much as saying one word about it.”
“Could we defer it till to-morrow, my dear Commodore?” said Maitland, coaxingly. “I have not the slightest notion what it is, but surely we could talk it over after breakfast.”
“But you 'll be off by that time. Beck said that there would be no use starting later than seven o'clock.”
“Off! and where to?”
“To the Burnside,—to the widow Butler's,—where else! You heard it all arranged at dinner, didn't you?”
“I heard something suggested laughingly and lightly, but nothing serious, far less settled positively.”
“Will you please to tell me, sir, how much of your life is serious, and how much is to be accepted as levity? for I suppose the inquiry I have to make of you amounts just to that, and no more.”
“Commodore Graham, it would distress me much if I were to misunderstand you once again to-night, and you will oblige me deeply if you will put any question you expect me to answer in its very simplest form.”
“That I will, sir; that I will! Now then, what are your intentions?”