“Well, I will try to be good. Now, don’t laugh! Let us be serious. Do you suppose folks take the seriousness of death into that other world? Not that I personally regard it as so very grim a business. There are many worse trials in life than dying, because vital calamities may repeat themselves; but it seems improbable that we shall have more than one experience of this exit.”
“Who can say?” said Carington. “I have been near it of late; but I can contribute to no wisdom.”
“I like to think I shall grin at the world from the safe side of the fence,” she returned. “Miss Pearson would have said that a due sense of the relative proportion of things would be inconsistent in another sphere with the minute dimensions of our earthly jests.”
“And you call that serious?”
“I do. Don’t you?”
“No. I shall have to ‘p’int’ the talk, as Mrs. Maybrook says.”
“And what shall we talk about? If I cannot put a smile into my talk, I shall prefer silence.”
He made no answer for a time, and then spoke gravely enough.
“I have had a very narrow escape, Miss Anne, and, but for that fine fellow, Jack, I should have been lost to this life, or, if you like, this life to me.”
“Yes, that is so. I am proud of the boy. He has made a friend, I trust.”