"
"Why do you build?" said he. "A town house is a nuisance. If I could induce
my wife to take the children to the country to live, I'd dispose of this."
"That's it--the wife," said I.
"But you have no wife. At least--"
"No," I replied with a laugh. "Not yet. But I'm going to have."
I interpreted his expression then as amused cynicism. But I see a different
meaning in it now. And I can recall his tone, can find a strained note
which then escaped me in his usual mocking drawl.
"To marry?" said he. "I haven't heard of that."
"Nor no one else," said I.
"Except her," said he.
"Not even except her," said I. "But I've got my eye on her--and you know
what that means with me."
"Yes, I know," drawled he. Then he added, with a curious twinkle which I do
not now misunderstand: "We have somewhat the same weakness."
"I shouldn't call it a weakness," said I. "It's the quality that makes the
chief difference between us and the common run--the fellows that have no
purposes beyond getting comfortably through each day--"
"And getting real happiness," he interrupted, with just a tinge of
bitterness.
"We wouldn't think it happiness," was my answer.
"The worse for us," he replied.
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