“See here, Forbes, you must have some deep design to make you take that attitude.”
“Deep design!” replied Forbes, facing round. “I'll be hanged if I see what you are driving at. I thought it was Saratoga and Richfield, and mild things of that sort.”
“And the little Lamont. I know we talked of going there with her and her uncle; but we can go there afterwards. I tell you what I'll do: I'll go to Richfield, and stay till snow comes, if you will take a dip with me down into Virginia first. You ought to do it for your art. It's something new, picturesque--negroes, Southern belles, old-time manners. You cannot afford to neglect it.”
“I don't see the fun of being yanked all over the United States in the middle of August.”
“You want shaking up. You've been drawing seashores with one figure in them till your pictures all look like--well, like Lamont and water.”
“That's better,” Forbes retorted, “than Benson and gruel.”
And the two got into a huff. The artist took his sketch-book and went outdoors, and King went to his room to study the guide-books and the map of Virginia. The result was that when the friends met for dinner, King said:
“I thought you might do it for me, old boy.”
And Forbes replied: “Why didn't you say so? I don't care a rap where I go. But it's Richfield afterwards.”
What occurred at the parting between the artist and the little Lamont at Bar Harbor I never knew. There was that good comradeship between the two, that frank enjoyment of each other's society, without any sentimental nonsense, so often seen between two young people in America, which may end in a friendship of a summer, or extend to the cordial esteem of a lifetime, or result in marriage. I always liked the girl; she had such a sunny temper, such a flow of originality in her mental attitude towards people and things without being a wit or a critic, and so much piquancy in all her little ways. She would take to matrimony, I should say, like a duck to water, with unruffled plumage, but as a wife she would never be commonplace, or anything but engaging, and, as the saying is, she could make almost any man happy. And, if unmarried, what a delightful sister-in-law she would be, especially a deceased wife's sister!
