“What was that?” asked Tom, listlessly.
“I took Miss Wrexham seriously. I asked her to marry me. That was just three years ago.”
“Poor old boy! Why didn’t you tell me? Are you going to try your fate again? She is coming down here in a week.”
Manvers looked up.
“The deuce she is! No; the incident is closed.”
“Were you badly hurt?”
“I found everything distasteful for a time, but I recovered. Life is so amusingly improbable. Fancy my doing that sort of thing! However, it was very useful; I learned several lessons.”
“What did you learn?”
“I learned that nothing can really damage one’s capacity for enjoyment. Don’t think I wasn’t in earnest about it; I was in deadly earnest. The second was that homme propose. It is a truism, of course, but it is useful to find by experience that a truism is true. I have yet to learn who disposes,” he added. “I must say I have never personally experienced the last part of the proverb. By the way, I was talking to an old model the other day who was sitting to me for my ‘Fourth Act’—the thing of the woman with the fan—and she said, ‘Man appoints, God disappoints.’ But woman usually disappoints. And the third thing I learned was that the most foolish thing in the world is to be serious. While one can certainly amuse one’s self it is idle to forego that bird in the hand for a problematic bird in the bush.”
“I wish I could learn one thing a year,” said Tom, “as you have been doing. I should be getting confoundedly wise by now.”