“Yes, my son?”
“Your burden is grievous hard, and yet——”
“Yes, my son?”
But Meriwether Lewis could not speak further. He stood now, his jaws set hard, looking out of the window.
The older man came and gently laid a hand upon his shoulder.
“Come, come, my son,” said he, his own voice low and of a kindness it could assume at times. “You must not—you must not yield to this, I say. Shake off this melancholy which so obsesses you. I know whence it comes—your father gave it you, and you are not to blame; but you have more than your father’s strength to aid you. And you have me, your friend, who can understand.”
Lewis only turned on him an eye so full of anguish as caused the older man to knit his brow in deep concern.
“What is it, Merne?” he demanded. “Tell me. Ah, you cannot tell? I know! ’Tis the old melancholy, and something more, Merne, my boy. Tell me—ah, yes, it is a woman!”
The young man did not speak.
“I have often told all my young friends,” said Mr. Jefferson slowly, after a time, “that they should marry not later than twenty-three—it is wrong to cheat the years of life—and you approach thirty now, my son. Why linger? Listen to me. No young man may work at his best and have a woman’s face in his desk to haunt him. That will not do. We all have handicap enough without that.”