"Really, you are growing sentimental. The waters verily are moved."
"That is because an angel has troubled them. You will mock, I know; but it is nevertheless true, as I am told, that, for the week before I left Boston, she was in a half-delirious state, and constantly called my name."
"And you heard her and came. Sharp senses, and a good, dutiful boy!"
"My presentiment was strange, wasn't it?"
"Oh, don't try to coax me into believing all that! It's very pretty, and would make a nice little romance for a magazine; but you and I have passed the age of measles and chicken-pox. Now, to follow your example, let me make a summary. You are in love, you say, which, for the sake of argument, I will grant. You are engaged. But you are ambitious. You want to go to Italy, and you hope to surpass Claude, as Turner has done—over the left. Then you will return and marry the constant Alice, and live in economical splendor, on a capital—let me see—of eighty-seven dollars and odd cents, being the proceeds of a certain auction-sale. Promising, isn't it?"
Greenleaf was silent,—his pipe out.
"Don't be gloomy," continued Easelmann, in a more sympathetic tone. "Let us take a stroll round the Common. I never walk through the Mall at sunset without getting a new hint of effect."
"I agree to the walk," said Greenleaf.
"Let us take Charbon along with us."
"He doesn't talk."