“Bless me!” cried Gloriani, “did he do this?”
“Ages ago,” said Roderick.
Gloriani looked at the photograph a long time, with evident admiration.
“It ‘s deucedly pretty,” he said at last. “But, my dear young friend, you can’t keep this up.”
“I shall do better,” said Roderick.
“You will do worse! You will become weak. You will have to take to violence, to contortions, to romanticism, in self-defense. This sort of thing is like a man trying to lift himself up by the seat of his trousers. He may stand on tiptoe, but he can’t do more. Here you stand on tiptoe, very gracefully, I admit; but you can’t fly; there ‘s no use trying.”
“My ‘America’ shall answer you!” said Roderick, shaking toward him a tall glass of champagne and drinking it down.
Singleton had taken the photograph and was poring over it with a little murmur of delight.
“Was this done in America?” he asked.
“In a square white wooden house at Northampton, Massachusetts,” Roderick answered.