"No?" he said, questioningly. "I wonder at that, for she seems to like me a great deal; indeed, we are great friends."
"I am glad to hear it," I replied, "for somehow I can't be friendly with strange girls."
"No," he said, "I don't think you are cut out for a girl's friend, and you are not the kind of fellow a girl would like."
There is something in every man's heart which causes him to feel hurt when he hears another say something about him that he would have no hesitation in saying about himself. I had said many times that I was not a lad whom girls liked, and yet when Wilfred said it I was annoyed.
"After all, it's right," he went on. "It is not fair that you should have everything and I, nothing. You have the Trewinion name, its houses, its lands, and its blessings, while I have nothing but my brains, and people's love."
"There are curses in connexion with Trewinion's heir as well as blessings," I said. "I am fettered on every hand."
"Curses," he sneered; "all old wives' tales. I wonder at you thinking about them. Were I the eldest son I would throw all that to the wind, I would see the world; I would enjoy myself, and spend some of the hoarded gold of generations."
He looked at me closely as he said this, and I began to feel that perhaps the old stories were foolishness. All my father had told me seemed real in the night time, but in daylight it was shadowy and unreal.
"Do you know about these stories?" I said.
"Yes."