"But I do, though. I want something I haven't got often enough; and, for the life of me, I don't know what it is. Sometimes I think it's a wife. Sometimes I think it's freedom to do whatever I please. Sometimes I think it's a bottle of claret and a jolly good laugh. But to return to the trousers."
"Now leave my trousers alone. It's quite disgusting to treat serious things after such a fashion."
"I didn't know trousers were serious things—except to old grandfather Adam. But it's not about your trousers I was talking. It was about my own."
"I see nothing particular about yours."
"That's because I'm neither glad nor sorry."
"What do you mean?"
"Now you come to the point. That's just what I wanted to come to myself, only you wouldn't let me. You kept shying like a half-broke filly."
"Come now, Charles, you know nothing about horses, I am very sure."
Charles Wither smiled, and took no other notice of the asseveration.
"What I mean is this," he said, "that when I am in a serious, dull-gray, foggy mood, you know—not like this sky—"