"EH, BUT SHE'S WINSOME."
"Eh, but she's winsome!"
Grant Harlson entered my room one evening with this irrelevant exclamation.
I have remained unmarried, and have learned how to live, as a man may, after a fashion, who has no aid from that sex which alone knows how to make a home.
Harlson, at this time, had apartments very near me, and we invaded each other's rooms at will, and were a mutual comfort to each other, and a help—at least I know that he was all this to me. I have never yet seen a man so strong and self-reliant or secretive—save some few who were misers or recluses, and not of the real world—who, if there were no woman for him, would not tell things to some one man. We two knew each other, and counted on each other, and while I could not do as much for him as he for me, I could try as hard. He knew that.
"Eh, but she's winsome!"
He went to the mantel, took a cigar, and lit it, and turned to me indignantly:
"You smoke-producing dolt, why are you silent? Didn't you hear my earnest comment? Where is the trace of good behavior you once owned?"
"Who's winsome?"
"She, I tell you! She—the girl I met to-night. And you sit there and inhale the fumes of a weed, and are no more stirred by my announcement than the belching chimney of an exposition by the fair display around it!"