"Well, then—however telling it may be to hurrah for bubbles, and to call your wife a bubble, and your child another; because the world is all a 'fleeting show,' and bubbles are a 'fleeting show;' or because the Scriptures tell us that everything here is emptiness and vanity—and bubbles are emptiness and vanity; I have the whole of your argument, I believe?—is hardly worthy of a man, who, in writing, would wish to make his fellow-man better or wiser—"
"Well done the bubble!—I never heard you reason before: keep it up, my dear."
"You never gave me a chance; and, by the way, there is one bubble you have entirely overlooked."
"And what is that—marriage?"
"No."
"The buried treasures, and the cross of pure gold, a foot and a half long, you were talking with that worthy man about, last winter, when I came upon you by surprise, and found you both sitting together in the dark—and whispering so mysteriously?"
"Captain Watts, you mean, the lighthouse keeper?"
"Yes. Upon my word, Peter, I began to think you were up for California. I never knew you so absent in all your life as you were, day after day, for a long while after that conversation."
"The very thing, my dear!—and as I happen to know most of the parties, and was in communication for three whole years with the leader of the enterprise, I do think it would be one of the very best illustrations to be found, in our day, of that strange, steadfast, unquenchable faith, which upholds the bubble-hunter through all the sorrows and all the discouragements of life, happen what may: and you shall have the credit of suggesting that story. But then, look you, my dear—if I content myself with telling the simple truth, nobody will believe me."
"Try it."