If you tell me
that Aurelia is but a giddy girl, I shall believe that you think so.
But I shall know, all the while, what profound dignity, and sweetness,
and peace lie at the foundation of her character."
I say such things to Titbottom during the dull season at the office.
And I have known him sometimes to reply with a kind of dry, sad humor,
not as if he enjoyed the joke, but as if the joke must be made, that
he saw no reason why I should be dull because the season was so.
"And what do I know of Aurelia or any other girl?" he says to me with
that abstracted air. "I, whose Aurelias were of another century and
another zone."
Then he falls into a silence which it seems quite profane to
interrupt. But as we sit upon our high stools at the desk opposite
each other, I leaning upon my elbows and looking at him; he, with
sidelong face, glancing out of the window, as if it commanded a
boundless landscape, instead of a dim, dingy office court, I cannot
refrain from saying:
"Well!"
He turns slowly, and I go chatting on--a little too loquacious,
perhaps, about those young girls.
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