“Not if the court knows herself. But to Buffalo, which is pretty much the same thing. Still, thank goodness, I don’t need to stay there long. I’ll be in New York before I’m many days older. I yearn to plunge into the arena once more. The still, calm peacefulness of this whole vacation has made me long for excitement again, and I’m glad the warrant has pushed me into the turmoil.”
“Well, Richard, I’m sorry you have to go under such conditions. I’m afraid I have not been as companionable a comrade as you should have had.”
“Oh, you’re all right, Renny. The trouble with you is that you have drawn a little circle around Toronto University, and said to yourself: ‘This is the world.’ It isn’t, you know. There is something outside of all that.”
“Every man, doubtless, has his little circle. Yours is around the Argus office.”
“Yes, but there are special wires from that little circle to all the rest of the world, and soon there will be an Atlantic cable.”
“I do not hold that my circle is as large as yours; still, there is something outside of New York, even.”
“You bet your life there is; and, now that you are in a more sympathetic frame of mind, it is that I want to talk with you about. Those two girls are outside my little circle, and I want to bring one of them within it. Now, Renmark, which of those girls would you choose if you were me?”
The professor drew in his breath sharply, and was silent for a moment. At last he said, speaking slowly:
“I am afraid, Mr. Yates, that you do not quite appreciate my point of view. As you may think I have acted in an unfriendly manner, I will try for the first and final time to explain it. I hold that any man who marries a good woman gets more than he deserves, no matter how worthy he may be. I have a profound respect for all women, and I think that your light chatter about choosing between two is an insult to both of them. I think either of them is infinitely too good for you—or for me either.”
“Oh, you do, do you? Perhaps you think that you would make a much better husband than I. If that is the case, allow me to say you are entirely wrong. If your wife was sensitive, you would kill her with your gloomy fits. I wouldn’t go off in the woods and sulk, anyhow.”