A gentle, sorrowful perplexity filled my
breast.
"Why, do--I--look--very--very--unusual, John?" I questioned, and looking
in his face I wondered why, in the old days of careless jest and
repartee, he had never seemed so moved.
More words he said, but I could not bear them then, and tears from an
inward pain fell on the cedar spray, yet I was glad that I had not grown
so unusual that people would never like me any more.
Next, the surprise was a success, as John Cable had predicted, but that
was the one point in my career in which my genius had never failed me. My
surprises, though inclined to take something of the nature of an
accumulation of calamities, had never lacked the great element of
awe-producing wonder.
For the rest, I had known that I should be forgiven and received with the
usual _eclat_ of the returned prodigal into the family bosom--but to be
held up on successive days as an object of ever-increasing marvel and
interest, as one whose words and acts were endowed with a peculiar
significance, as the light of the social fireside, the enchanter of small
spell-bound audiences! Well, I had been spoiled so early in life that
little was needed to complete the wreck.
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