"Why?"
"Because life is an embodied joke to him."
Weldon rose a little stiffly. His call had lasted its allotted time;
nevertheless, under other conditions, it might have lasted even
longer. He liked Ethel Dent absolutely; yet now and then she had a
curious fashion of antagonizing him. The alternations of her cordial
moments with her formal ones were no more marked than were the
alternations of her viewpoint. As a rule, she looked on life with
the impartial eyes of a healthy-minded boy; occasionally, however,
she showed herself hidebound by the fetters of tradition, and, worst
of all, she wore the fetters as if they lay loosely upon her. At
such moments, he longed acutely to impress her with his own point of
view, as the only just one possible.
"I think perhaps you don't fully understand Carew, Miss Dent," he
said courteously, yet with a slight accent of finality. "He laughs
at life like a child; but he lives it like a man. I have known him
since we were boys together; I have never known him to shirk or to
funk a difficult point. If the Scottish Horse ever sees the firing
line, it will hold no better trooper than Harry Carew."
He bowed in farewell and turned away.
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