"Why don't you marry?"
"Ha!" said Francis Charles.
"Whachamean—'Ha'?"
"I mean what the poet meant when he spoke so feelingly of the
"———eager boys Who might have tasted girl's love and been stung."
"Didn't say it. Who?"
"Did, too! William Vaughn Moody. So I say 'Ha!' in the deepest and fullest meaning of the word; and I will so defend it with my life."
"If you were good and married once, you might not be such a fool," said
Sedgwick hopefully.
"Take any form but this"—Mr. Boland inflated his chest and held himself oratorically erect—"and my firm nerves shall never tremble! I have tracked the tufted pocolunas to his lair; I have slain the eight-legged galliwampus; I have bearded the wallipaloova in his noisome den, and gazed into the glaring eyeballs of the fierce Numidian liar; and I'll try everything once—except this. But I have known too many too-charming girls too well. To love them," said Francis Charles sadly, "was a business education."
He lit a cigar, clasped his hands behind his head, tilted his chair precariously, and turned a blissful gaze to the little rift of sky beyond the crowding maples.