“Well,” he said when he had finished, “I knew you could fight a bit, but this is a revelation. ‘Missus missed thee’—ha! ha! ha!”
It was well for Jack and Tom both that the steward and servants entered at that moment with the dinner. Poetry soon gave place to soup, and sentiment fled on the appearance of the roast-beef.
But when dessert was placed upon the table, and the servants had gone, Jack, feeling bound to open his heart to somebody, told Tom about the fool’s paradise to which he meant to flit from Castle Despair, in which he had dwelt so long.
Tom was a thoroughly practical kind of a young fellow, and now he shook his head consideringly.
“M—m—m, well,” he said, “the notion isn’t half a bad one, you know, perhaps. But, Jack, doesn’t it savour somewhat of the reckless? Scotsmen are all reckless, I know, especially, I believe, the Grant Mackenzies; and your idea may be good, but—a—”
“Well, well, Tom, out with it, man. What are you humming and hawing about?”
“Why, it’s like this, you see—and, mind, I speak to you as a brother—it may be very pleasant, say, for a few friends met together to take an extra glass of wine, and spend a happy evening, but shouldn’t they think of their heads in the morning?”
“I have thought of my head in the morning, Tom; I have thought of the awakening. I do know that some day I shall see an announcement in the Times of the marriage of Sir Digby Auld and—heigh-ho! Gerty; that then I shall have to leave my pretty paradise, and that the flaming sword of honour will forbid my ever entering there again. But till then, Tom, till then. Bother it all, man, you wouldn’t have a fellow make himself miserable all his life, simply because he knows he has got to go to Davy Jones’ locker at the finish?”
“Well, then, brother mine, I mean to live in my fool’s paradise as long as ever I can, and when the end comes I’ll flit.”