but his
Good-Enough-Morgan."

"I rather like that," knowingly drawled the youth. "I fancy these gloomy
souls as little as the next one. Sitting on my sofa after a champagne
dinner, smoking my plantation cigar, if a gloomy fellow come to me--what
a bore!"

"You tell him it's all stuff, don't you?"

"I tell him it ain't natural. I say to him, you are happy enough, and
you know it; and everybody else is as happy as you, and you know that,
too; and we shall all be happy after we are no more, and you know that,
too; but no, still you must have your sulk."

"And do you know whence this sort of fellow gets his sulk? not from
life; for he's often too much of a recluse, or else too young to have
seen anything of it. No, he gets it from some of those old plays he sees
on the stage, or some of those old books he finds up in garrets. Ten to
one, he has lugged home from auction a musty old Seneca, and sets about
stuffing himself with that stale old hay; and, thereupon, thinks it
looks wise and antique to be a croaker, thinks it's taking a stand-way
above his kind."

"Just so," assented the youth. "I've lived some, and seen a good many
such ravens at second hand. By the way, strange how that man with the
weed, you were inquiring for, seemed to take me for some soft
sentimentalist, only because I kept quiet, and thought, because I had a
copy of Tacitus with me, that I was reading him for his gloom, instead
of his gossip. But I let him talk. And, indeed, by my manner humored
him."

"You shouldn't have done that, now. Unfortunate man, you must have made
quite a fool of him."

"His own fault if I did. But I like prosperous fellows, comfortable
fellows; fellows that talk comfortably and prosperously, like you. Such
fellows are generally honest. And, I say now, I happen to have a
superfluity in my pocket, and I'll just----"

"----Act the part of a brother to that unfortunate man?"

"Let the unfortunate man be his own brother. What are you dragging him
in for all the time? One would think you didn't care to register any
transfers, or dispose of any stock--mind running on something else. I
say I will invest."

"Stay, stay, here come some uproarious fellows--this way, this way."

And with off-handed politeness the man with the book escorted his
companion into a private little haven removed from the brawling swells
without.

Business transacted, the two came forth, and walked the deck.

"Now tell me, sir," said he with the bo