"Have you any reason to be dissatisfied
with my choice?" I asked.
"Not at all. I think she is one of the most charming young
ladies I ever met, and might have been most useful in such work
as we have been doing. She had a decided genius that way:
witness the way in which she preserved that Agra plan from all
the other papers of her father. But love is an emotional thing,
and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason
which I place above all things. I should never marry myself,
lest I bias my judgment."
"I trust," said I, laughing, "that my judgment may survive the
ordeal. But you look weary."
"Yes, the reaction is already upon me. I shall be as limp as a
rag for a week."
"Strange," said I, "how terms of what in another man I should
call laziness alternate with your fits of splendid energy and
vigor."
"Yes," he answered, "there are in me the makings of a very fine
loafer and also of a pretty spry sort of fellow. I often think
of those lines of old Goethe,--
Schade dass die Natur nur EINEN Mensch aus Dir schuf,
Denn zum wuerdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff.
"By the way, a propos of this Norwood business, you see that they
had, as I surmised, a confederate in the house, who could be none
other than Lal Rao, the butler: so Jones actually has the
undivided honor of having caught one fish in his great haul.
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