“Worse than nothing, I fancy, Eugene. My own small income (I devoutly wish that my grandfather had left it to the ocean rather than to me!) has been an effective Something, in the way of preventing me from turning to at Anything. And I think yours has been much the same.”
“There spake the voice of wisdom,” said Eugene. “We are shepherds both. In turning to at last, we turn to in earnest. Let us say no more of that, for a few years to come. Now, I have had an idea, Mortimer, of taking myself and my wife to one of the colonies, and working at my vocation there.”
“I should be lost without you, Eugene; but you may be right.”
“No,” said Eugene, emphatically. “Not right. Wrong!”
He said it with such a lively—almost angry—flash, that Mortimer showed himself greatly surprised.
“You think this thumped head of mine is excited?” Eugene went on, with a high look; “not so, believe me. I can say to you of the healthful music of my pulse what Hamlet said of his. My blood is up, but wholesomely up, when I think of it. Tell me! Shall I turn coward to Lizzie, and sneak away with her, as if I were ashamed of her! Where would your friend’s part in this world be, Mortimer, if she had turned coward to him, and on immeasurably better occasion?”
“Honourable and stanch,” said Lightwood. “And yet, Eugene—”
“And yet what, Mortimer?”
“And yet, are you sure that you might not feel (for her sake, I say for her sake) any slight coldness towards her on the part of—Society?”