"No, but I'm going to do nothing of the sort," interrupted Bert resentfully. "What I mean--if you'll let me finish--is, I'm getting too old to be eternally undignifying myself with this 'singing of midnight strains under Bonnybell's window-panes,' and too old to be keeping myself in constant humiliation and expense by the borrowing and stringing up of old guitars, together with the breakage of the same, and the general wear-and-tear on a constitution that is slowly being sapped to its foundations by exposure in the night-air and the dew." "And while you receive no further compensation in return," said John, "than, perhaps, the coy turning up of a lamp at an upper casement where the jasmine climbs; or an exasperating patter of invisible palms; or a huge dank wedge of fruit-cake shoved at you by the old man, through a crack in the door." "Yes, and I'm going to have my just reward, is what I mean," said Bert, "and exchange the lover's life for the benedict's. Going to hunt out a good sensible girl and marry her." And as the young man concluded this desperate avowal he jerked the bow of his cravat into a hard knot, kicked his hat under the bed, and threw himself on the sofa like an old suit. John stared at him with absolute compassion. "Poor devil," he said half musingly, "I know just how he feels-- "Ring in the wind his wedding chimes, Smile, villagers, at every door; Old churchyards stuffed with buried crimes, Be clad in sunshine o'er and o'er.--" "Oh, here!" exclaimed the wretched Bert, jumping to his feet; "let up on that dismal recitative. It would make a dog howl to hear that!" "Then you 'let up' on that suicidal talk of marrying," replied John, "and all that harangue of incoherency about your growing old. Why, my dear fellow, you're at least a dozen years my junior, and look at me!" and John glanced at himself in the glass with a feeble pride, noting the gray sparseness of his side-hair, and its plaintive dearth on top. "Of course I've got to admit," he continued, "that my hair is gradually evaporating; but for all that, I'm 'still in the ring,' don't you know; as young in society, for the matter of that, as yourself! And this is just the reason why I don't want you to blight every prospect in your life by marrying at your age--especially a woman--I mean the kind of woman you'd be sure to fancy at your age." "Didn't I say 'a good sensible girl' was the kind I had selected?" Bert remonstrated. "Oh!" exclaimed John, "you've selected her, then?--and without one word to me!" he ended, rebukingly. "Well, hang it all!" said Bert impatiently; "I knew how YOU were, and just how you'd talk me out of it; and I made up my mind that for once, at least, I'd follow the dictations of a heart that-- however capricious in youthful frivolities--should beat, in manhood, loyal to itself and loyal to its own affinity."