Thus, when Leonard appealed to him on this particular morning, merely because he had come across something that had fired his enthusiasm afresh, Jack did not respond to the proposal with the cordiality that the other evidently wished for.
“I don’t mind going a short trip with you, old man,” Jack said presently, “for a little hunting, if you feel restless and are a-hungering after a spell of wandering—a few days, or a week or two, if you like—but a long expedition with nothing to go upon, as it were, seems to me only next door to midsummer madness.”
Leonard turned away with an air of disappointment, and just then Maud Kingsford, who had been playing and singing inside the room, stepped out.
Leonard discreetly went into the house and left the two alone, and Maud greeted Jack with a rosy tell-tale flush that made her pretty face look still more charming. In appearance she was neither fair nor dark, her hair and eyebrows being brown and her eyes hazel. She was an unaffected, good-hearted girl, more thoughtful and serious, perhaps, than girls of her age usually are—she was twenty, while Stella, the younger sister, was between eighteen and nineteen—and had shown her capacity for managing a home by her success in that line in their own home since her mother’s death a few years before. The practical-minded Jack, who had duly noted this, saw in it additional cause for admiration; but, indeed, it was only a natural outcome of her innate good sense. She now asked what her lover and Leonard had been talking of.
“The usual thing,” was Jack’s reply. “He’s mad to go upon an exploring expedition; thinks we could succeed where others have failed. It’s so unlikely, you know. Now, if he would only look at the thing practically——”
Maud burst into a merry laugh.
“You do amuse me—you two,” she exclaimed; at which Jack looked a little disconcerted. “You always insisting so upon being strictly non-speculative, and Leonard, with his romantic phantasies, and his dreams and visions, and vague aspirations after castles in the air. You are always hammering away at him, trying to instil practical ideas into him with the same praiseworthy perseverance, though you know that in all these years you have never made the least little bit of impression upon him. Your ideas and his are like oil and water, you know. They will never mix, shake them together as you will.”
“But—don’t you think I am right? Isn’t it common sense?”
“Quite right, of course; and you are persevering; I’ll say that for you.”
“For the matter of that, so’s Leonard,” said Jack with a good-natured laugh. “He’s as persevering with this fad of his as any man I ever met in my life. I do believe he’s got a fixed idea that he has only to start upon this enterprise, and he will come back a made man with untold and undreamt-of wealth and——”