“Jack, I want advice; I’m troubled, old chap. Come into my room while I dress for dinner. Don’t shy and stand on your hind-legs; it’s not about Agatha Sprowl; it’s about me, and I’m in trouble.”
The appeal flattered and touched Coursay, who had never expected that he, a weak and spineless back-slider, could possibly be of aid or comfort to his self-sufficient and celebrated cousin, Dr. Lansing.
They entered Lansing’s rooms; Coursay helped himself to some cognac, and smoked, waiting for Lansing to emerge from his dressing-room.
Presently, bathed, shaved, and in his shirt-sleeves, Lansing came in, tying his tie, a cigarette unlighted between his teeth.
“Jack,” he said, “give me advice, not as a self-centred, cautious, and orderly citizen of Manhattan, but as a young man whose heart leads his head every time! I want that sort of advice; and I can’t give it to myself.”
“Do you mean it?” demanded Coursay, incredulously.
“By Heaven, I do!” returned Lansing, biting his words short, as the snap of a whip.
He turned his back to the mirror, lighted his cigarette, took one puff, threw it into the grate. Then he told Coursay what had occurred between him and the young girl under the elm, reciting the facts minutely and exactly as they occurred.
“I have the box in my trunk yonder,” he went on; “the poor little thing managed to slip out while Munn was in the barn; I was waiting for her in the road.”
After a moment Coursay asked if the girl was stone blind.