"But you are right, Colonel, and I am wrong. All a fellow works for in this life is a happy home; and it seems I'm never going to have that—at least the kind I mean, the complete one. It gets further and further away as I get older. I used to say that when I was thirty I would have all those I loved about me. Look at me now!" He spread out his hands futilely. "I'm nearly thirty, living alone, a bachelor, and many times, for all my gay spirits and friends, terribly lonely."
"You ought to get married. Why don't you? There are plenty of nice girls everywhere."
Everett winced and turned abruptly away. When he spoke again his face was towards the cotton fields. "But they don't want a cripple for a husband," he answered the old man's remark. "They want a man of fine proportions, who will do them credit when they are seen together. They want one who—" he narrowed his eyes a moment, and in them came the tenderness of bygone days, "—who will go to church with them, and send them beautiful nosegays and take them to dances." He ended, smiling upon the Colonel's surprised countenance. "I once heard a woman say, Colonel," he began again, more seriously, "that she chose her husband because he looked well in a ball-room. And I don't blame her—perfection and beauty are the greatest factors in our lives."
The old Colonel smiled over his pipe.
"I'm afraid, Mr. Everett, that you are a much better lawyer than a judge of the ladies. I have a higher opinion of them than you have. They are not half so silly as you paint them."
"You misunderstand me, Colonel," Everett answered hurriedly. "I revere them more than any man. But they love the beautiful in life, and they are beautiful themselves. My bitterness comes only from my inability to give them what they demand."
Colonel Pickram grunted sarcastically.
"You can give them a good deal, I think. I'd like to see the woman who wouldn't be satisfied to be a Congressman's wife and spend her winters in Washington. The trouble with you, Mr. Everett, and you'll pardon me for saying it, is that you've never been in love."
Sargent rose from his chair almost abruptly. Walking to the end of the veranda and back again, he faced Colonel Pickram, smiling down into the rough old fellow's face as if he were much his elder.
"Perhaps you are right, Colonel," he said, taking out his watch. "Time's up, however, so we had better drop dreaming and be on our way to grapple with politics."