“Of course it is for your sake,” he replied.
“But it is such a pity to waste any more time,” I said.
“There is no such hurry,” he answered, rather testily.
I looked at him in surprise.
“What I mean,” he said, “is that I can be thinking the arrangement of the book over.”
We had, of course, a good many callers at this time, and I told most of them about the book. For reasons to be seen by and by I regret this now.
When the week had become a fortnight, I insisted on leaving George alone in the study after dinner. He looked rather gloomy, but I filled the ink-bottles, and put the paper on the desk, and handed him his new pen. He took it, but did not say “thank you.”
An hour afterward I took him a cup of tea. He was still sitting by the fire, but the pen had fallen from his hands.
“You are not sleeping, George?” I asked.
“Sleeping!” he cried, as indignantly as if I had charged him with crime. “No, I’m thinking.”