“And why not, pray?” she answered, proudly resentful of his protest. “What has become of your theories about the dignity of honest toil?”
“It’s not that—only—it is a chariot of fire that is coming to snatch you away from me,” he said, simply, and in spite of herself Kathleen was touched.
Colin, seeing his advantage, tried to follow it up. But it is the misfortune of those in his peculiar state, that the very force of their desire to be agreeable to the beloved object defeats their chances of success. He could find nothing appropriate to say, and felt as he looked—large, lumbering, disconsolate.
No wonder Kathleen flitted away from him to laugh and chaff lightly with the others. Even little Catullus, with his poses and bushy hair and solemn fripperies, made the time pass for her more trippingly than did Morry’s friend.
Terence, however, in his element as a host, presiding with rare grace and tact over their frugal feast, understood better than any one the art of amalgamating divers elements in a party. To their number was presently added Duval of the Clarion, who had just been writing his critique of the last new play at the —— Theater, that would help to form opinion on the subject next morning at many breakfast tables. Talk took itself wings, and soon was stirring with mirthful impulse.
Then Terence, who possessed a tenor voice that might have coined ducats for his family where his pen won them a bare livelihood, sang some of his Irish melodies—not Tom Moore’s only, but Lover’s, and the like. Gazing for an inspiration at his pretty Kathleen, he trolled out the delicious by-gone serenade that carried his wife back many a long year, and brought to her eyes the tears of tenderest sentiment.
“Oh! Molly Bawn, why leave me pining,
All lonely waiting here for you,
When the stars above are brightly shining
Because they’ve nothing else to do?