"That's enough," sighed Laud. "I actually suffer for her sake. If the quest were hopeless," Laud read novels—"I think I should drown myself."
"You had better do it right off, then," added Donald.
"You can pity me, Don John, for I am miserable. Day and night I think only of her. My feelings have made me almost crazy, and I hardly knew what I was about when I applied the incendiary torch to the Maud."
"I thought it was a card of friction matches."
"The world will laugh and jeer at me for loving one above my station; but love makes us equals."
"Perhaps it does when the love is on both sides," added the practical boat-builder.
"But I think I am fitted to adorn a higher station than that in which I was born."
"If so, you will rise like a stick of timber forced under the water; but it strikes me that you have begun in the wrong way to figure for a rise."
"But I wish to rise only for Nellie's sake. You can help me, Don John; you can take me into her presence, where I can have the opportunity to win her affection."
"I guess not, Laud. Shall I tell you what she said to me this afternoon?"