"I say, Traverse! I believe you are getting melancholy," said Mr. Fenerty, as, seated in Guy Traverse's office, he watched Guy bend over the papers on the desk before him, yet seeming to accomplish nothing.
Getting no response to his repeated sallies, he added:
"What's up! out with it! If that pile of papers is in a tangle, say the word, and I'll bring my mighty brain to bear on them, and set them in order for you in no time! No? Are the men going out on a strike, then? or is your great-grandma down with the measles? Then, for Heaven's sake, why such a doleful expression? It is enough to give one the blues to look at you!" and he re-crossed his legs and looked searchingly at his friend.
"That's all your nonsense, Fenerty! I'm all right! What's the news?" and Traverse leaned back in his chair as if to resign himself to the inevitable.
"News! he asks for news, when I have come here expecting to find him boiling over with anxiety to impart news to someone!" and Fenerty rolled up his eyes in astonishment. "However, now that I have looked at you, and seen the settled melancholy of those features, I am obliged to own that you do not look like a man to be congratulated."
"Why should I be congratulated, and for what? What joke are you struggling to get rid of, Fenerty?"
"'Pon honor, Traverse, I believe you are right! The congratulations are due in some other quarter, yet who is he?"
"I am as much in the dark as yourself, Fenerty. I own that I hoped to win her myself, and I feel the disappointment—keenly."
"Traverse, I hope you will not think me a meddling fool; but I would like to know if it is all up with the other one—she of the letter, I mean. You might tell a fellow that much."
Traverse looked at him keenly. He knew that Fenerty had a good heart, with all his bantering, and it was plain enough to all that his attentions to Dexie Sherwood could have but one significance. Yet there must be a feeling in the mind of Fenerty, as well as others, that in the light of that letter he was not "off with the old love before he was on with the new." Should he trust Fenerty with the secret of the letter, and have at least one friend who would not think him dishonorable in the matter?