XXX.
WASTED ADVICE.
I will not tell you what more we did that week, nor how many wagonloads of big game we bagged when we sallied forth with guns to make war upon the monarchs of the forest: perhaps their hides and horns are on view in my library, and perhaps not. Nor will you expect any more scenery of me, seeing how I have groaned and sweated to produce the pen-pictures you have already enjoyed: I don't desire to advertise Jim's retreat too much, and spoil its seclusion. He was impatient and restive, but feeling much better than when I came, and ready to do anything I wished—of course. But he wanted to talk all the time, and ask questions: he kept me busy pacifying him, till I was tired. Rational conversation on serious subjects is good, but to be thus forever harping on small personal feelings and relations makes one realize that Silence is Golden. Clarice never acts in that way: I wish Jim would have some occasional flashes of taciturnity, like Macaulay.
The day before I left, while we were burying a calf I had shot by mistake, he said, "Bob, do you remember my asking you once, in a purely suppositious way, what you would do if I were to quarrel with—Her?"
"O yes. But the farmer that owned this late lamented beast ought to be paid for it."
"Never mind that. I'll attend to it after you're gone, and save your feelings. Well, you said you'd stand by both of us."
"Hang my feelings: do you suppose I expend feelings on a misguided heifer? It got in the bushes where you said I might look for a deer, and here's a ten on account; you can write me if it costs more. My sympathies, James, are reserved for nobler animals when they make worse mistakes."
"Yes, as I have proved. You've kept your word; but you were pretty rough on me."
"Your conduct was pretty rough on all of us. I had to open your eyes; and I don't want you to try those tricks again. If you do, I may have to shoot you by mistake."
"You would have been welcome to shoot me last week. Why did you leave me so long in the dark, Bob?"