"Brooke," said she, "you have your own way. Your way is to conceal a most tender and pitying heart under a rough or at least an indifferent manner--to hide the deepest feeling under a careless smile, and pretend to be most volatile and flippant when you are most serious. You can perform heroic actions as though they were the merest trifles, and lay down your life for a friend with an idle jest. You make nothing of yourself and all of others. You can suffer, and pretend that you enjoy it; and when your heart is breaking, you can force your voice to troll out verses from old songs as though your chief occupation in life were nonsense, and that alone. And this is the man," continued Talbot, in a dreamy tone, like that of one soliloquizing--"this is the man that I found by chance in my distress; the man that responded to my very first appeal by the offer of his life; that went into the jaws of death merely to bring me food; the man that gave up all the world for me--his duty, his love, his life; the man that has no other purpose now but to save me, and who, when his whole frame is quivering with anguish, can smile, and sing, and--" "Well, what of it?" interrupted Brooke, harshly. "What of it, oh, thou searcher of hearts? And, moreover, as to nonsense, don't you know what the poet says? "'A little nonsense now and then Is relished by the wisest men.' Moreover, and, yea, more, as to smiles and laughter, don't you know what another poet says?--Shakspeare, for instance: "''Tis better to laugh than be sighing;' or, as Lord Bacon, or Plato, or somebody else says, 'Laugh and grow fat.' And didn't John Bunyan prefer the House of Mirth to the House of Mourning? "'John Bunyan was a tinker bold, His name we all delight in; All day he tinkered pots and pans, All night he stuck to writin'. In Bedford streets bold Johnny toiled, An ordinary tinker; In Bedford jail bold Johnny wrote-- Old England's wisest thinker. About the Pilgrims Johnny wrote, Who made the emigration; And the Pilgrim Fathers they became Of the glorious Yankee nation. Ad urbem ivit Doodlius cum Caballo et calone, Ornavit plnma pilenm Et diiit:--Maccaroni!' "Excuse me," he continued; "you don't understand dog-Latin, do you, Talbot?" "No," said she, with a smile, "but I understand you, Brooke."