roaned and sweated to produce the pen-pictures you
have already enjoyed: I don't desire to advertise Jim's retreat too
much, and spoil its seclusion. He was impatient and restive, but feeling
much better than when I came, and ready to do anything I wished--of
course. But he wanted to talk all the time, and ask questions: he kept
me busy pacifying him, till I was tired. Rational conversation on
serious subjects is good, but to be thus forever harping on small
personal feelings and relations makes one realize that Silence is
Golden. Clarice never acts in that way: I wish Jim would have some
occasional flashes of taciturnity, like Macaulay.

The day before I left, while we were burying a calf I had shot by
mistake, he said, "Bob, do you remember my asking you once, in a purely
suppositious way, what you would do if I were to quarrel with--Her?"

"O yes. But the farmer that owned this late lamented beast ought to be
paid for it."

"Never mind that. I'll attend to it after you're gone, and save your
feelings. Well, you said you'd stand by both of us."

"Hang my feelings: do you suppose I expend feelings on a misguided
heifer? It got in the bushes where you said I might look for a deer, and
here's a ten on account; you can write me if it costs more. My
sympathies, James, are reserved for nobler animals when they make worse
mistakes."

"Yes, as I have proved. You've kept your word; but you were pretty rough
on me."

"Your conduct was pretty rough on all of us. I had to open your eyes;
and I don't want you to try those tricks again. If you do, I may have to
shoot you by mistake."

"You would have been welcome to shoot me last week. Why did you leave me
so long in the dark, Bob?"

"O, the deuce! Were explanations due from our side? It's true you need
somebody to take care of you; but, you see, I have others to look after,
and so can't devote myself exclusively to you: you'd better get a
keeper. It was Jane who urged my coming up here. I always meant to, but
I couldn't till Clarice suggested it."

"She suggested it, did she? You never told me that before."

"I ought not to have told you now, if it makes you fly off the handle in
this way. She merely said to Mabel, no doubt in all sincerity, that I
looked badly and needed a change; she said nothing about my coming here.
She has a regard for me; whether you are anybody in her eyes remains to
be seen. Don't jump to conclusions, now. The Princess is not a person to
take