“What do you think about it?” demanded John sternly, his eyes towards the distant Castle, but his words intended for the old priest.
“Sure, I was thinking every bit the same as you’re thinking, till twenty minutes or so agone,” responded Father Maloney.
“And now?” demanded John.
“Glory be to God, is it a sermon you’re wanting?” asked Father Maloney with a little twinkle in his eyes.
CHAPTER X
CORIN THEORIZES
Corin, from the depths of one armchair, regarded John in the depths of another.
“For sheer, racy, brilliant conversation commend me to you,” he remarked sarcastically. “For the last hour at least—I’ve had my eye on the clock—you’ve uttered no single word. You’ve rivalled the immortal William’s lover in your sighs. Talk of a furnace, it’s like ten furnaces you’ve been. Sigh, sigh, and again sigh. What’s the matter with you, man? Is it love, sorrow, or remorse for an ill-spent youth? Come, out with it. Disburden your soul of the worm i’ the bud which is feeding on your damask cheek. Speak, I implore you.”
John roused himself.
“Oh,” he responded airily enough, “in the matter of conversation I fancied we’d had enough of it at dinner—supper—whatever the original, but wholly appetizing meal might be called. We conversed pretty tolerably, I fancy.”
“Conversation!” Corin’s voice expressed a depth of utter scorn. “Conversation! If that’s what he calls the airy, frothy, soap-bubble words which fell from his lips! Oh, you didn’t deceive me. I saw in them the mere cloak to an aching heart. You just over-did the lighthearted careless rôle. You’ve said fifty times more in the last hour. But now I want the translation, the interpretation. Where’s the use of first frivolling, and then glooming? Strike the happy medium. Come, consider me a confidant,” he ended on a note of coaxing.