thought, for some progress. "Well, Jim, you wanted to unfold your tale
to-night."

"That is, you wanted to ask me about it. You can't do any good, and I
don't find speech a safety-valve: but I suppose it is my duty to supply
you with amusement. So get on, and say what is on your mind."

He takes this tone to conceal his morbid yearning to ease his bosom of
its perilous stuff: I will have his coil unwound pretty soon. If I were
not here, he would probably be whispering her name under the solemn
stars, and shouting it in tragic tones on the lonely mountain-top;
sighing it under the waterfalls, and expecting the trout to echo it. He
talks about fishing the home brook the first rainy day, but he must have
scared all the fish away from there with his sentiment. I must remember
to notice whether 'C. E.' is carved about the forest. He will pretend to
hold back; but I will get it out of him.--I made this pause long enough
to let him prepare for the examination on which depends his admission
into the civil service, so to speak--he will have to be more civil and
serviceable than hitherto if he is to pass it, and follow me back to
town--and indeed his whole future.

"You say you have lost something valuable. All you had, you said it was;
but that is nonsense. You have health, and more money than you want, and
brains and education, of which you are making very poor use, and
friends, whom you are treating badly. I can't think what you have
lost--unless it was your heart, perhaps." This I brought in in the way
of afterthought, as if it had suddenly occurred to me. He started, but
assumed a tone of cynical indifference.

"My heart? Would I sit down and howl over that? What use have I for a
heart, any more than for a poodle? And if I had one, what does it matter
what may have become of it?"

"Strayed or stolen, probably. Such things have happened, especially when
persons of the opposite sex are about. They are apt to attach themselves
to poodles, and vice versa. But if you give me your honor that a loss of
heart is not the cause of these lamentations--"

"Why will you press that point, Bob? What is done can't be undone, and
what is broken can't be mended."

"And what is crooked can't be made straight, and what is wanting can't
be supplied; though these things are done every day and every hour. Why
any able-bodied lady of my acquaintance, even those at my own house,
limited as is their experience of the world's devious ways--Jan