“Rushing things!” repeated Tom to Thorndyke one day with a laugh. “Why it seems to me as if my life at Fenimore’s was somewhere away back in the dark ages! There’s been more peace and comfort, in these later days, more steady standing up with the feeling that I was a man, in every one of them, than I’d had in my whole life together before. But even peace and comfort don’t tell the whole of it. There’s more blessedness than that, by a long shot, in feeling that I have got a close hold on a fellow like you and another like Aleck. There’s no use saying much about it, though. Words don’t seem to do the business.”
No, they do not. And Thorndyke only gave Tom a look in reply; but that said “God bless you, old fellow, as you’ve blessed us a thousand times;” and then Thorndyke himself said, “There goes Aleck again with that fine turnout of his. He’s getting more practice than he knows how to turn his hand to, already!”