"You are a happy man, Ned," said George, laughing.
"Happy?" questioned Ned, half to himself, and as though the idea had struck him for the first time in his life. "Well, I suppose I am. I don't see much advantage to be gained by being otherwise."
"Nor I; but, for all that, people differently constructed from your fortunate self cannot always help being otherwise."
"Bah! Of course they can; particularly in love matters. Love was not meant to make a man mope, but to stir him up. Those old fogies in the middle ages had a much truer idea of love, as of many other things, than we have nowadays, with all our boasting. Ah! love then was the genuine article. Not all sighs, and tears, and millinery, and newspaper paragraphs, and mothers-in-law, and the lovers playing cat's-cradle to each other. No; but the man went about his business, bearing his love in his heart for a year and a day. He wore his lady's gage on his helm, and, if his business happened to be the giving and taking of hard knocks, why, he gave and took, his love and himself against the world. He rode in the lists under his lady's eye, and proved himself a brave man for her sake. Love nerved his arm, whilst it purified his heart and softened his soul. Why did the wife gird the buckler on her lord? Love was akin to religion then, marriage a sacrament, and not, as it now is...."
"A social exchange, a trade carried on by the great Mother-in-law Company, Unlimited—a thing of barter and loss, where dollars are wedded to dollars by the magistrate, where youth and beauty sells herself to old age for so much a year and her own carriage. O Ned, Ned! what a pity we were not born in the middle ages!"
"Hallo!" said Ned, "I did not mean to go quite so far as that, George. After all, they were men and women then, just as we are; and, though one cannot help breaking out now and again on modern notions, one thing is certain—for every true knight there is somewhere a true lady."
"Have you found yours yet, Ned?"
"Perhaps not, perhaps yes," said Ned, dropping a moment his light tone. "Perhaps because I am not a true knight; perhaps because, though I found a true lady, she was meant for somebody else. Because I may have made one mistake, that is no reason why my true lady should not be waiting for me somewhere, nor why I should fail to rejoice at seeing two others happy, though my own toes may have been trodden on a little bit. After all, the world is very wide and full of happy possibilities."
Something unusual in Ned's tone seemed to spring from real feeling that lay concealed under his usual airy manner; perhaps suffering, with which his good-nature cared not to trouble the sufficiently trouble-laden world. For the first time in his life, George Howard felt a little ashamed of himself, and conscious of something akin to selfishness in his nature which he had never suspected there before. It takes a very long time to see ourselves. Self-knowledge comes piecemeal, and the pieces that go to make the human mosaic are sometimes very ugly when seen alone, though they may pass muster in the whole, and merge and be lost in its common symmetry.
When he awoke the following morning, and the thought came to him that the usually dreary day was to be enlivened for once by the presence of Ned Fitzgerald, the thought was not an unpleasant one; and when that gentleman burst into his room with a bundle of sea-weed in his hand, speckled all over with curious little shells, which he said he would keep for Mary, the look of young, active, earnest life in his bright eyes and diffused over his whole person seemed in some indescribable manner to make the sun brighter and the air clearer. George began to feel young again, and examined the shells and the slimy weed, over which Ned gloated and expatiated, with an interest that would have been a marvel to him yesterday.