If it had come to savage sarcasm or a
logical encounter, he could have held his own, but he had a natural
weight and slowness that disabled him from keeping up with Berry's
light talk; he envied it, because it seemed to make everybody like
him, and Lemuel would willingly have been liked.
Miss Carver began to talk to him about the book, and then about Mr.
Evans. She asked him if he went much to his rooms, and Lemuel said
no, not at all, since the first time Mr. Evans had asked him up. He
said, after a pause, that he did not know whether he wanted him to
come.
"I should think he would," said Miss Carver. "It must be very gloomy
for him, with his wife such an invalid. He seems naturally such a
gay person."
"Yes, that's what I think," said Lemuel.
"I wonder," said the girl, "if it seems to you harder for a
naturally cheerful person to bear things, than for one who has
always been rather melancholy?"
"Yes, it does!" he answered with the pleasure and surprise young
people have in discovering any community of feeling; they have
thought themselves so utterly unlike each other. "I wonder why it
should?"
"I don't know; perhaps it isn't so. But I always pity the cheerful
person the most."
They recognised an amusing unreason in this, and laughed. Miss Swan
across the room had caught the name.
"Are you talking of Mrs.
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