For a second the young man's forehead clouds, then he breaks into an excited laugh.
"Tell her? I should rather think I should! Do you suppose that I shall lose a moment in telling everybody I know—everybody I ever heard of? I want you to tell everybody too—every single soul of your acquaintance!"
"I?"
"Tell Amelia; tell Cecilia"—quite unaware, in his excitement, of the freedom he is taking, for the first time in his life, with those young ladies' Christian names—"tell the other one—the sick one; tell them all! I want her to feel that all my friends, everybody I know, welcome her—hold out their arms to her. I want them all to tell her they are glad—you most of all, of course, old chap; she will not think it is all right till you have given your consent!"—laughing again with that bubbling-over of superfluous joy. "Do you know—it seems incomprehensible now—but there was a moment when I was madly jealous of you? I was telling her about it to-day; we were laughing over it together in the wood."
Burgoyne feels that one more mention of that wood will convert him into a lunatic, quite as indisputable as his companion, only very much more dangerous.
"Indeed!" he says grimly. "I should have thought you might have found a more interesting subject of conversation."
"Perhaps I was not so very far out either"—possibly dimly perceiving, even through the golden haze of his own glory, the lack of enjoyment of his last piece of news conveyed by Jim's tone—"for she has an immense opinion of you. I do not know anyone of whom she has so high an opinion; she says you are so dependable."
The adjective, as applied to himself by Elizabeth and her mother, has not the merit of novelty in the hearer's ears, which is perhaps the reason why the elation that he must naturally feel on hearing it does not translate itself into words.
"So dependable," repeats Byng, apparently pleased with the epithet. "She says you give her the idea of being a sort of rock; you will come to-morrow, and wish her joy, will not you?"
"I am afraid that my wishing it her will not help her much to it," answers Burgoyne, rather sadly; "but I do not think you need much doubt that I do wish it. Joy"—repeating the word over reflectively—"it is a big thing to wish anyone."