mance, minus anything to
do. Your equation is worthy of Mrs. Harvey Anderson. I gave her a
good dose of the 'Diseases of Climate!''
Aubrey was looking at Ethel all the time Gertrude was triumphing; and
finally he said, 'I've no absolute faith in disinterested philanthropy
to a younger brother--whatever I had before I went to the Tyrol.'
'What has that to do with it?' asked Gertrude. 'Everybody was cut up,
and wanted a change--and you more than all. I do believe the
possibility of a love affair absolutely drives people mad: and now they
must needs saddle it upon poor Tom--just the one of the family who is
not so stupid, but has plenty of other things to think about.'
'So you think it a stupid pastime?'
'Of course it is. Why, just look. Hasn't everybody in the family
turned stupid, and of no use, as soon at they went and fell in love!
Only good old Ethel here has too much sense, and that's what makes her
such a dear old gurgoyle. And Harry--he is twice the fun after he
comes home, before he gets his fit of love. And all the story books
that begin pleasantly, the instant that love gets in, they are just
alike--so stupid! And now, if you haven't done it yourself, you want
to lug poor innocent Tom in for it.'
'When your time comes, may I be there to see!'
He retreated from her evident designs of clapper-clawing him; and she
turned round to Ethel with, 'Now, isn't it stupid, Ethel!'
'Very stupid to think all the zest of life resides in one particular
feeling,' said Ethel; 'but more stupid to talk of what you know nothing
about.'
Aubrey put in his head for a hurried farewell, and, 'Telegraph to me
when Mrs. Thomas May comes home.'
'If Mrs. Thomas May comes home, I'll--'
'Give her that chair cover,' said Ethel; and her idle needlewoman,
having been eight months working one corner of it, went off into fits
of laughter, regarding its completion as an equally monstrous feat with
an act of cannibalism on the impossible Mrs. Thomas May.
How different were these young things, with their rhodomontade and
exuberant animation and spirits, from him in whom all the sparkle and
aspiration of life seemed extinguished!
CHAPTER XXVII
A cup was at my lips: it pass'd
As passes the wild desert blast!
*****
I woke--around me was a gloom
And silence of the tomb;
But in that awful solitude
That little spirit by me stood--
But oh, how changed!
--Thoughts in Past
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