“It’s I that have got little to be proud of,” replied I.
“Really, Batchelor, you are quite wrong there. I think it’s very generous the way you have always stuck to him—with certainly not much encouragement.”
“Well,” said I, “I shall have another attempt to make it up with him.”
Hawkesbury mused a bit, and then said, smilingly, “Of course, it’s a very fine thing of you; but do you know, Batchelor, I’m not sure that you are wise in appearing to be in such a hurry?”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“I mean, I shall be as glad as any one to see you two friends again: but if you seem too eager about it, I fancy you would only be demeaning yourself, and giving him a fresh chance of repulsing you. My advice as a friend is, wait a bit. As long as he sees you unhappy about it he will have a crow over you. Let him see you aren’t so greatly afflicted, and then, take my word for it, he’ll come a good deal more than half way to meet you.”
There seemed to be something in this specious advice. I might, after all, be defeating my own ends by seeming too anxious to make it up with Jack Smith, and so making a reconciliation more difficult in the end. I felt inclined, at any rate, to give it a trial.
But the weeks that followed were wretched weeks. I heard daily and regularly from Billy all the news I could gather of my friend, but before Smith himself I endeavoured to appear cheerful and easy in mind. It was a poor show. How could I seem cheerful when every day I was feeling my loss more and more?
My only friends at this time were Hawkesbury and Billy and young Larkins. The former continued to encourage me to persevere in my behaviour before Smith, predicting that it would be sure, sooner or later, to make our reconciliation certain. But at present it did not look much like it. If I appeared cheerful and easy-minded, so did Smith. The signs of relenting which I looked for were certainly not to be discovered, and, so far from meeting me half way, the more unconcerned about him I seemed, the more unconcerned he seemed about me.
“Of course he’ll be like that at first,” said Hawkesbury, when I confided my disappointment one day to him, “but it won’t last long. He’s not so many friends in the world that he can afford to throw you over.”