"I've always felt," said I, anxious to draw him out so that I might see what the conspirators had been doing, "that there's nothing in _that_ idea. But what has changed your view?"
"Antonia, and Josie, and even your wife," said he, "have been keeping up a regular lobby in my behalf with Laura. They think they've got the deal plugged up now, so that she'll give me a show again, and--"
"Why, surely," said I; "in my opinion, there never was any need for you to feel downcast."
"Barslow," he said, with the air of a man who has endured to the limit, "you are a good fellow, but you make me tired when you talk like that. Why, four weeks ago I had no more show than a snowball in--in the crater of Vesuvius. But now I'm encouraged. These girls have been doing me good, as I just said, and I'm convinced that my series of editorials on 'The Influence of Christianity on Civilization,' in which I've given the Church the credit of being the whole thing, has helped some."
"They ought to do good somewhere," said I, "they certainly haven't boomed Lattimore any."
"Damn Lattimore!" said he bitterly. "When a man's very life--But see here, Barslow, I know you're not in earnest about this. And I'll be all right in a day or two, or I'll be eternally wrong. I'm going to make one final cast of the die. I may go down to bottomless perdition, or I may be caught up to the battlements of heaven; but such a mass of doubts and miseries as I've been lately, I'll no longer be! Pray for me, Barslow, pray for me!"
This despairing condition of Giddings's was a sort of continuing sensation with us at that time. We discussed it quite freely in all its aspects, humorous and tragic. It was so unexpected a development in the young man's character, and, with all due respect to the discretion and resisting powers of Miss Addison, so entirely gratuitous and factitious.
"He has ability as a writer," said the Captain; "but in such a mattah anybody but a fool ought to see that the thing to do is to chahge the intrenchments. I trust that I may not be misunde'stood when I say that, in my opinion, a good rattling chahge would not be a fo'lo'n hope!"
"It bothers," said Jim; "and if it weren't for that, I'd feel conscience-stricken at doing anything to rob the idiot of a most delicious grief."