“Even if it is not pleasant?”
“Yes; say on.”
“If I were in your place, Waddie, I would be the most popular fellow in the whole region round about us. I would have every fellow like me, and stand by me,” I continued earnestly, as the boat approached the Narrows.
“Well, I have tried to be.”
“Have you, indeed!” I replied, laughing in spite of myself at the absurdity of the proposition, though it is very likely Waddie believed what he said, strange as it may seem.
“I have been president of the steamboat company, major of the battalion; and I don’t see why the fellows don’t like me.”
“I will tell you candidly why they do not. Because you think more of yourself than you do of any other fellow. You are selfish and exacting. You think every fellow ought to yield to you; and you are tyrannical and overbearing toward them. That’s what’s the matter, though I shouldn’t have said so if you had not told me to do it.”
“Do you think I am so bad as that?” said he, looking moody and solemn, rather than angry, as I supposed he would be.
“I have told you just what I think. Look at it for yourself a moment. Go back to the time when you blowed up that canal-boat. Do you think you treated the skipper and his daughter just right? Then you threatened to blow out my brains if I did not do as you told me.”
“Don’t say any more about that. I am willing to own that I was wrong,” pleaded he.