"And we have been up the river a good many times in a boat."
"I see. The river is pleasant at this time of the year."
"And we have been riding together a good deal. Phil rides very well, you know."
"Does she? It seems to me, Jack, that my cousin Agatha is a fool, and that you have been having rather a high time in consequence. Surely you can't complain if I ask you to consider the innings over for the present?"
"No; I can't complain, if one may hope——"
"Let us hope nothing. Sufficient for the day. He who hopes nothing gets everything. Come out of it at once, Jack, before you get hit too hard."
"I think no one was ever hit so hard before," said Jack. "Colquhoun, you don't know your ward. It is impossible for any one to be with her without falling in love with her. She is——" Here he stopped, because he could not go any farther. Anybody who did not know the manly nature of Jack Dunquerque might have thought he was stopped by emotion.
"We all get the fever some time or other. But we worry through. Look at me, Jack. I am forty, and, as you see, a comparatively hale and hearty man, despite my years. It doesn't shorten life, that kind of fever; it doesn't take away appetite; it doesn't interfere with your powers of enjoyment. There is even a luxury about it. You can't remember Geraldine Arundale, now Lady Newladegge, when she came out, of course. You were getting ready for Eton about that time. Well, she and I carried on for a whole season. People talked. Then she got engaged to her present husband, after seeing him twice. She wanted a Title, you see. I was very bad, that journey; and I remember that Agatha, who was in my confidence, had a hot time of it over the faithlessness of shallow hearts. But I got over the attack, and I have not been dangerously ill, so to speak since. That is, I have made a contemptible ass of myself on several occasions, and I dare say I shall go on making an ass of myself as long as I live. Because the older you grow, somehow, the sweeter do the flowers smell."
Jack only groaned. It really is no kind of consolation to tell a suffering man that you have gone through it yourself. Gilead Beck told me once of a man who lived in one of the Southern States of America: he was a mild, and placid creature, inoffensive as a canary bird, quiet as a mongoose, and much esteemed for his unusual meekness. This harmless being once got ear-ache—very bad ear-ache. Boyhood's ear-aches are awful things to remember; but those of manhood, when they do come, which is seldom, are the Devil. To him in agony came a friend, who sat down beside him, like Eliphaz the Temanite, and sighed. This the harmless being who had the ear-ache put up with, though it was irritating. Presently the friend began to relate how he once had the ear-ache himself. Then the harmless creature rose up suddenly, and, seizing an adjacent chunk of wood, gave that friend a token of friendship on the head with such effect that he ceased the telling of that and all other stories, and has remained quite dumb ever since. The jury acquitted that inoffensive and meek creature, who wept when the ear-ache was gone, and often laid flowers on the grave of his departed friend.
Jack did not heave chunks of wood at Colquhoun. He only looked at him with ineffable contempt.