“But, Good Lord,” he said helplessly, “suppose—suppose a black beetle argues that way, and does his best, and lives to a good old beetle age. And suppose another black beetle gives up in the beginning, and takes some morphine-for-beetles, and next minute gets crushed by a watering cart. What then?”
“But I,” said Pelleas with admirable dignity, “am not a beetle.”
“But confound it, sir,” Hobart said, “I’m afraid I am. That’s the difference.”
“All philosophical arguments,” Pelleas observed, wrinkling the corners of his eyes, “end that way. But beetles or not, doing one’s best is the only way out.”
“But the ‘best’ of a beetle—” Hobart shrugged.
Then I spoke out with conviction.
“You, for example, Hobart Eddy,” I said, “would be a perfect husband.”
“Thanks, dear heart,” he replied, “it’s a common virtue, that.”
“It’s very uncommon,” I protested stoutly; “I can think of no one besides Pelleas and you and Wilfred and Horace and Lawrence and David and Our Telephone and Eric who in the least possess it. Hobart Eddy, if you would marry—”
“Don’t tell me, Aunt Etarre,” he said, “that a married beetle is in the scheme of things any nearer the solution than a single one. Besides—” he added and stopped. I had noted, when we were on this not infrequent subject, that he was wont to say this, and stop; and when he did so my heart always went a thought faster than my reason: What if he did love some one of whom we had never guessed? But that I dismissed as absurd; for in that case, how should she not love him?