When, a couple of hours later, all was satisfactorily over, when the last health had been drunk, the last song sung, and Dare was driving Mr. Alwynn home in the shabby old Vandon dog-cart, both men were at first too much overcome by the fumes of tobacco, in which they had been hidden, to say a word to each other. At last, however, Mr. Alwynn drew a long breath, and said, faintly:
"I trust I may never be so hot again. Drive slowly under these trees, Dare. It is cooling to look at them after sitting behind that steaming volcano of a turkey. How is your head getting on? I saw you went in for punch."
"Was that punch?" said Dare. "Then I take no more punch in the future."
"You spoke capitally, and brought in the right sentiment, that there is no place like home, in first-rate style. You see, you need not have been nervous."
"Ah! but it was you who spoke really well," said Dare, with something of his old eager manner. "You know these people. You know their heart. You understand them. Now, for me, I said what you tell me, and they were pleased, but I can never be with them like you. I understand the words they speak, but themselves I do not understand."
"It will come."
"No," with a rare accession of humility. "I have cared for none of these things till—till I came to hear them spoken of at Slumberleigh by you and—and now at first it is smooth, because I say I will do what I can, but soon they will find out I cannot do much, and then—" He shrugged his shoulders.
They drove on in silence.
"But these things are nothing—nothing," burst out Dare at last, in a tremulous voice, "to the one thing I think of all night, all day—how I love Miss Deyncourt, and how," with a simplicity which touched Mr. Alwynn, "she does not love me at all."
There is something pathetic in seeing any cheerful, light-hearted animal reduced to silence and depression. To watch a barking, worrying, jovial puppy suddenly desist from parachute expeditions on unsteady legs, and from shaking imaginary rats, and creep, tail close at home, overcome by affliction, into obscurity, is a sad sight. Mr. Alwynn felt much the same kind of pity for Dare as he glanced at him, resignedly blighted, handsomely forlorn, who but a short time ago had taken life as gayly and easily as a boy home for the holidays.