"Please don't put out the sunshine with your brilliancy."
"Ironical, too! What is the matter to-day?"
"What penetration! Reveal your intuitions. Have I failed in business, or been crossed in love?"
"The latter, I fancy."
"Well, then, how can I better recover peace of mind and serenity than by going a-fishing? You know what Izaak Walton says—"
"Oh, spare me, please, that ancient worthy! You are as cold-blooded as any fish that you'll catch. If I find it stupid in Charleston I'll go North."
"That threat shakes my very soul. I promise to come back in a week or ten days."
"Or a month or so," she added, looking hurt.
"Come, my good friend," he said, laughing. "We're too good fellows, as you wished we should be, to pretend to any forlornness over a parting of this kind. You will sleep as sweetly and dreamlessly as if you had never seen Owen Clancy, and I will write you a letter, such as a man would write to a man, telling you of my adventures. If I don't meet any I'll bring some about—get shot by the moonlighters, save a mountain maid from drowning in a trout pool, or fall into the embrace of a black bear."
"The mountain maid, you mean."