He blinked his eyes. “Wait a moment, you rascal,” he said, brushing the sleeves of his black coat. “Take a cigar, sit down a moment. Let me collect my thoughts. I must say I hesitate to launch too quickly a subject with which I have not dealt for a good many years and one, if I remember rightly, I treated with considerable awkwardness on the former occasion.”
“When was that, sir?” I asked.
“When I courted my wife,” he said solemnly, looking for a moment at the floor.
“Perhaps, if I am not mistaken, you would have come to me, by and by,” he went on with the wrinkles gathering at the corners of his eyes. “Perhaps it is better for me to speak with you now anyhow. I am well along in years. My physician tells me that my cardiac valve—or whatever the blame thing is—is weak.”
“He told you recently!” I exclaimed.
“Bless you, no. More than two years ago. I haven’t been near him since, except to taste of some old madeira he keeps on his sideboard. No. I can’t quite explain why I am anxious to speak of this matter so soon, so hastily. I only want to ask one or two impertinent questions which you will forgive in a man who has grown, as to certain matters, as fussy as an old maid—or a mother.”
“Why, I will answer gladly enough,” I said awkwardly. I thought I knew what was on his mind; my tongue grew large in my mouth.
He was pacing up and down the room then, but finally he stopped and laughed and grew solemn again.
“Darn it, my boy,” he said. “I know you. I like you. I just wanted to know if you had ever been engaged—in the broad sense—engaged to a woman—with promises to fulfill. I just wanted to ask.”
“No,” said I.