"
"I pillaged books from the big library as I wanted them," said the young
man humbly. "Do you know, Tommy, to talk quite seriously, I get more
erratic every day? Knocking about the world and living alone make me a
queer slave of whims. I am straying too far from the normal. I wish to
goodness you would take me and drive me back to the ways of common
sense."
"Meaning--?
"That I am getting cranky and diffident. I am beginning to get nervous
about people's opinion and sensitive to my own eccentricity. It is a
sad case for a man who never used to care a straw for a soul on earth."
"Lewie, attend to me," said Wratislaw, with mock gravity. "You have not
by any chance been falling in love?"
The accused blushed like a girl, and lied withal like a trooper, to the
delight of the un-Christian George.
"Well, then, my dear fellow, there is hope for you yet. If a man once
gets sentimental, he desires to be normal above all things, for he has a
crazy intuition that it is the normal which women really like, being
themselves but a hair's-breadth from the commonplace. I suppose it is
only another of the immortal errors with which mankind hedges itself
about."
"You think it an error?" said Lewis, with such an air of relief that
George began to laugh and Wratislaw looked comically suspicious.
"Why the tone of joy, Lewie?"
"I wanted your opinion," said the perjured young man.
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