“Agreed, agreed, agreed!” we all answered.
“Well, then, to-morrow or next day we sail,” said Hearty. “But how can you, Carstairs, tear yourself away from your pretty widow? Bubble, you don’t mean to say that you can leave sweet May Sandon without a sigh?”
“A little absence will try the widow; it will teach her to miss me, and she will value me more when I return,” was Carstairs’ answer. “But you, Bubble, what do you say?” for he did not answer.
Will was guilty of blushing, for I saw the rosy hue appearing even through his sunburnt countenance, though the others did not.
“That is the best thing we can do,” he answered, with a loud laugh. “Hurrah for the broad seas, and a rover’s free life!”
“I thought so—I thought there was nothing in it,” said Hearty. “Happy dog!—you never fall in love; you never care for any one.”
“Ah, no: I laugh, sing, and am merry!” exclaimed Bubble. “It’s all very well for you fellows with your five or ten thousand a year to fall in love; you have hope to live on, if nothing else—no insurmountable obstacles; but for poverty-stricken wretches, like me and a dozen more I could name, it can only bring misery: yet I don’t complain of poverty—no cares, no responsibilities; if one has only one’s self to look after, it matters little; but should one unhappily meet with some being who to one’s eye is lovely, towards whom one’s heart yearns unconsciously, and one longs to make her one’s own, then one begins to feel what poverty really is—then the galling yoke presses on one’s neck. Can you then be surprised that I, and such as I, throw care away, and become the light frivolous wretches we seem? Hearty, my dear fellow, don’t you squander your money, or you will repent it!”
Bubble spoke with a feeling for which few would have given him credit. He directly afterwards, however, broke into his usual loud laugh, adding,—
“Don’t say that I have been moralising, or I may be suspected of incipient insanity.”
“Will Bubble has made out a clear case that he cannot be in love, for no one accuses him of being overburdened with the gifts of fortune,” I observed; for I saw that he was more in earnest than he would have wished to be supposed. “But do you, Hearty, wish to desert Miss Seaton, and leave the stage clear for Loring?”