“Upon my word, Jack, I didn’t think it was in the old girl! Capital! It is, by Jove!”
“Capital,” said I.
“Yes,” said he, “it is. But, I say, Jack—”
“What?” said I, with some expectancy, for he had lowered his voice to a confidential whisper.
“It is very clever in the old girl, and all that, you know. Jove! didn’t she hit out on a high line? ‘Incense-breathing mist,’—how does that strike you, Hein? And ‘tempestuous thud?’—what have you got to say to that? And ‘bickering eyes?’ But I say, Jack-Whack, old boy—”
“Well?”
“I say, you won’t tell her what I am going to say?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, I won’t deny that it is well written, and in a high, romantic vein; but—now you won’t tell her?—but before I would have it thought that I wrote that chapter, you might shoot me with a brass-barrelled pistol.”
With that he took up the manuscript, and began running his eye over it and reading aloud passages here and there. We both (I am ashamed to say) soon got to laughing, and Charley at last went off into an almost hysterical state, the tears streaming down his cheeks. Just then Alice suddenly re-appeared, and his features snapped together like a steel trap. Charley, in point of fact, was not laughing at his wife, but rather at the inherent absurdity of all love-scenes; but he felt guilty when she entered the room, and looked preternaturally solemn.