“To-day’s,” said he gaily. “Tear off yesterday’s leaf from the calendar, Al. For, look! the morn, dressed as usual, ‘walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill.’”
CHAPTER XVII.
Relating to the Disposition of the Captives.
It was not later than the next day but one, that I met Giddings, alert, ingratiating, and natty as ever.
“When am I to have the third stanza?” I inquired, “the one that’s ‘the best of all.’”
This question he seemed to take as a rebuke; for he reddened, while he tried to laugh.
“Barslow,” said he, “there isn’t any use in our discussing this thing. You couldn’t understand it. A man like you, who can calculate to a hair just how far he is going and just where to turn back, and—Oh, damn! There’s no use!”
I sympathize with Giddings, at this present moment, in his despair of making people understand; for I doubt, sometimes, whether it is possible for me to make the reader understand the conditions with us in Lattimore at the time when poor Trescott lay there in his fine house, fighting for life, and for many things more important, and while the wedding preparations were going forward at the General’s house.