Wasn't it right to suppose she must
be tremendously fond of him, to let him keep her on the string the way he
has? They've been engaged four years now. And was it any wonder I was mad
with Micky, seeing how he was loafing along, fooling his money away, not
looking ahead and denying himself as a man ought who's got a nice girl
waiting for him? I'm quite frank, you see; but when you hear what an ass
I've made of myself, you'll not begrudge me the few excuses I have to
offer. All I tried to do was to give Micky a leg to help him over his
natural difficulty--laziness, you know. He's not a bad sort at all, only
he's slow, and it's hard to get him to look things square in the face.
It was for her sake, supposing her happiness was bound up in him, that
I undertook to boom the marriage a bit. But Micky won't boom worth a
----. He's back on my hands now, and what in Heaven's name I'm to say to
her"--His eloquence failed him here, and he came down to the level of
ordinary conversation, with the remark, "It's a facer, by Jove!"
I managed not to smile. If he'd undertaken, I said, to "boom" his cousin's
marriage to a girl he liked himself, he ought at least to get credit for
disinterestedness; but so few good acts were ever rewarded in this world! I
seemed to have heard that it was not very comfortable, though it might be
heroic, to put one's hand between the tree and the bark.
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