I like to do people good—to do it my own self, too—a mean pleasure, perhaps, yet it is a pleasure, and I was pleased by this saying of Doctor Urquhart's. If I could but believe it! I do believe it sometimes. I know that I can make him smile, let him be ever so grave; that something in me and my ways interests and amuses him in an inglorious, kittenish fashion, as I said; yet, still, I draw him out of himself, I make him merry, I bring light into his face till one could hardly believe it was the same face that I first saw at 'the Cedars; and it is pleasant to me to think that, by some odd sympathy or other, I am pleasant to him, as I am to few—alas! to very few.
I know when people dislike me: know it keenly, painfully; I know, too, with a sort of stolid patience, when they are simply indifferent to me. Doubtless, in both cases, they have every reason; I blame nobody, not even myself, I only state a fact. But with such people I can no more be my natural self, than I can run about, bare-footed and bare-headed, in our north winds or moorland snows. But if a little sunshine comes, my heart warms to it, basks in it, dances under it, like the silliest young lamb that ever frisked in a cowslip-meadow, rejoicing in the May.
I am not, and never pretend to be, a humble person. I feel there is that in me which is worth something, but a return for which I have never yet received. Give me its fair equivalent, its full and honest price, and oh, if I could expend it every mite, how boundlessly rich I should grow!
This last sentence means nothing; nor do I quite understand it myself. Writing a journal is a safety-valve for much folly; yet I am by no means sure that I ought to have written the last page.
However, no more of this; let me tell the story of my day.
Walking from church, Doctor Urquhart told me that Augustus had asked him to be best-man at the wedding.
I said, I knew it, and wished he would consent.
“Why?”
Though the abrupt question surprised me, I answered, of course, the truth. That if the best-man were not himself, it would be one of the camp officers, and I hated—
“Soldiers?”