A New Sensation. Albert Ross

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СКАЧАТЬ might be said of him, he was a thoroughbred. The Spanish Inquisition could not have drawn a secret out of him. The worst he would do if he disapproved of my scheme was to tell me so, and I had a wild anxiety to talk it over with some one.

      "Halloa, old fellow!" he cried, as I entered his door. "Devilish glad to see you. Take one of these cigars, draw up here, put your feet beside mine on the desk, and tell me how you are."

      Accepting the invitation in both its phases I responded that I was improving every day, and that I believed myself nearly, if not quite, out of the woods.

      "Of course, you are," he replied, jovially. "And now you are out, will you get back again, or take a friend's advice and stay out?"

      "I don't even know how I got in," I remarked, dolefully. "When I see a chap like you in the enjoyment of all the health and spirits in the world it seems unfair that I should be knocked down in the way I was. Why, all the drinking I've done since I was born wouldn't satisfy you for half a year."

      Harvey blew a cloud of smoke to the ceiling and winked knowingly.

      "Rats!" he responded. "I only drink just enough to lubricate my mucous membrane. If you had drunk oftener and done some other things less, you would be in as fit shape as I am. It was plain to me for a long time that you would bring up where you did. No fellow can live on the edge of his nerves month after month without paying the piper, sooner or later."

      "Well," I said, "I'm through with it now, at all events. Lovely woman has got to get along without me, in the old way, for a long time to come. Dr. Chambers has given me a scare, and I'm going to profit by it."

      "Good!" exclaimed Harvey, with warmth.

      "Yes," I continued, smiling inwardly at the scheme I was about to divulge, "the sort of female creature with which I have spent my time and cash is to be banished from my waking and my sleeping dreams. I am going to take ship for some foreign port, and remain away till I am sure of my resolutions."

      Hume leaned over and took my hand in his own. My esteem for him rose with the action, which spoke more than words, but I went on with my story.

      "The doctor will not hear of my going alone, however," I pursued, "and—"

      "And he's quite right," he interpolated.

      "So I have advertised for a companion to make the trip. You don't seem to have conceived any plan for me, so I've invented one of my own."

      My friend interrupted again to compliment me on the common sense of the move.

      "You see, the genealogy of the Camran family that my Uncle has set his heart on gives me an excuse to secure the services of a companion in the guise of a typewriter. It takes off the feeling that I require a nurse, while practically providing the very same thing, in the event that one is needed."

      Hume nodded frequently, in approval. I was evidently rising rapidly in his estimation as a young man whose common sense had returned after a long vacation.

      "I hope you'll find the right sort of fellow," he said. "You ought to, if you've worded the advertisement right. The last time I put in such a notice, the time I got the man I now have—there was half a peck of answers."

      Taking up a pen, and putting my feet nearer the floor, I wrote a copy of the announcement I had left at the Herald office, and passed it to my friend.

      "How do you think that will do?" I inquired, gravely.

      He read it, sniffed once or twice and then threw it on the floor.

      "You are a good deal of a fool, but not such a d——d one as that!" he said.

      "It's exactly what I have done," was my reply. "When the answers come in I shall expect you to help me pick out the prizes."

      He laughed, refusing at first to be drawn into what he thoroughly believed a trap to catch him. Then he studied my face and grew doubtful.

      "Anybody but you, Don, might get some fun out of this. If you really have put such an ad. in the paper, the best thing you can do is to turn the entire lot of replies over to me, for investigation after you have left the country. But," he grew very sober, "to prance around among that sort of stuff yourself—at this time—would almost certainly put you back where you were last winter, with less chance than ever of recovery."

      It was a much rougher way of putting it than I had expected, and, to tell the truth, there was something creepy in the suggestion.

      "Your generosity is fully appreciated," I replied, with some dignity, "but I cannot think of exposing you to such terrible dangers. On reflection I do not think it best to trouble you in this matter. It would be a source of never-ending regret were I to return from abroad, and learn that you had taken my old place in the Sanitarium."

      Hume threw the butt of his finished cigar into a cuspidor and lit another one nonchalantly.

      "Don't you really see the difference?" he asked, when he found the weed drawing satisfactorily. "To me the adventures that might grow out of meeting a dozen or a hundred pretty women would result in nothing worse than passing some agreeable evenings. I never lost my head over one of the sex, and I never shall. If Mr. Donald Camran could say as much, I would tell him to carry out his intention. But, I leave it to you, my dear boy, to prophesy the result, if you go into this thing."

      I told him, with some mental misgivings, to be sure, that I had learned my lesson during the year that was past. No woman could make me lose my head again. At the same time I had not gotten over my admiration for the sex, and I saw no reason to do so.

      "I'm beginning to believe you're not fooling," said Hume, after studying my countenance again. "Now, tell me precisely what your game is. Let us have the scheme, just as it lies in your mind and, if there's a redeeming feature about it, trust me as a true friend to say so."

      We had at last reached the point I had hoped for, and I complied without hesitation.

      "I am acting primarily on the advice—almost on the orders—of Dr. Chambers. He wants me to take a sea voyage. He advises me strongly not to go alone. Then Uncle Dugald hints every time I see him that I ought to recommence the genealogy as soon as I feel able. A good stenographer would make that task an easy one. The reason I purpose taking a lady instead of a man—but you will certainly laugh if I tell you."

      My friend responded gravely that he would promise to do nothing of the sort.

      "Well," I continued, "it is this: and you may laugh at me if you like. I have led a life as regards women that I now think worse than idiotic. I have followed one after another of them, from pillar to post, falling madly in love, troubling my mind, worrying over the inevitable separations, getting the blues, losing heart, all that sort of thing; then, beginning over again with a new charmer, and pursuing the inevitable round. I have never been intimately acquainted with a pure, honest girl of the better classes, except one, who, this morning, refused my offer of marriage. I have no feminine relations except a couple of old aunts. I need sadly to be educated by a woman who will not hold out temptation. I believe a few months in the society of such a woman, away from old associations, will make another man of me."

      When I think of it now I wonder that Harvey, with his keen sense of the ludicrous, did not burst into a laugh, in spite of his promise. But he took my serious story with equal seriousness and bowed gravely.

      "What СКАЧАТЬ