The young man settled back, and stuffed tobacco into a battered pipe.
Then, with a lightness of tone which was assumed as a defense against
her mischievous teasing, he began: "Very well, Drennie. When you were twelve, which is at best an
unimpressive age for the female of the species, I was eighteen, and all
the world knows that at eighteen a man is very mature and important.
You wore pigtails then, and it took a prophet's eye to foresee how
wonderfully you were going to emerge from your chrysalis."
The idolatry of his eyes told how wonderful she seemed to him now.
"Yet, I fell in love with you, and I said to myself, 'I'll wait for
her.' However, I didn't want to wait eternally. For eight years, I have
danced willing attendance--following you through nursery, younger-set
and débutante stages. In short, with no wish to trumpet too
loudly my own virtues, I've been your Fidus Achates." His voice
dropped from its pitch of antic whimsey, and became for a moment grave,
as he added: "And, because of my love for you, I've lived a life almost
as clean as your own."
"One's Fidus Achates, if I remember anything of my Latin, which
I don't"--the girl spoke in that voice which the man loved best,
because it had left off bantering, and become grave with such softness
and depth of timbre as might have trembled in the reed pipes of a
Sylvan Pan--"is one's really-truly friend. Everything that you claim
for yourself is admitted--and many other things that you haven't
claimed. Now, suppose you give me three minutes to make an accusation
on other charges. They're not very grave faults, perhaps, by the
standards of your world and mine, but to me, personally, they seem
important."
Wilfred nodded, and said, gravely: "I am waiting."
"In the first place, you are one of those men whose fortunes are
listed in the top schedule--the swollen fortunes. Socialists would put
you in the predatory class."
"Drennie," he groaned, "do you keep your heaven locked behind a gate
of the Needle's Eye? It's not my fault that I'm rich. It was wished on
me. If you are serious, I'm willing to become poor as Job's turkey.
Show me the way to strip myself, and I'll stand shortly before you
begging alms."
"To what end?" she questioned. "Poverty would be quite inconvenient. I
shouldn't care for it. But hasn't it ever occurred to you that the man
who wears the strongest and brightest mail, and who by his own
confession is possessed of an alert brain, ought occasionally to be
seen in the lists?"