"Dick, old man," he said with a solemnity that could not have been greater had he been telling me of some great tragedy, "I want you to give me your congratulations. Miss Trevor has consented to become my wife."
I was so surprised that I scarcely knew what to do or say.
"Good gracious, man!—then why are you so downcast?" I replied. "I had made up my mind that she had refused you!"
"I am far from being downcast," he said as solemnly as before. "I am the happiest man in the world. Can't you understand how I feel? Somehow—now that it is over, and I have won her—it seems so great a thing that it almost overwhelms me. You don't know, Dick, how proud I am that she should have taken me!"
"And so you ought to be," I said enthusiastically. "You'll have a splendid wife, and I know you'll make a good husband."
"I don't deserve it, Dick," he continued in humiliating self-abasement. "She is too good for me, much too good."
"I remember that I said the same thing myself," I replied. "Come to me in five years' time and let me hear what you have to say then."
"Confound you," he answered; "why do you talk like that?"
"Because it's the way of the world, my lad," I answered. "But there, you'll learn all for yourself soon enough. Now let me order a whisky-and-potash for you, and then off you go to bed."
"A whisky-and-potash?" he cried, with horror depicted on his face. "Do you think I'm going to drink whisky on the night that she has accepted me? You must be mad."