The change in him was almost painful to witness
whenever our wandering talk touched on the subject of the
aborigines, and of the knowledge he had acquired of their
character and languages when living or travelling among them; all
that made his conversation most engaging--the lively, curious
mind, the wit, the gaiety of spirit tinged with a tender
melancholy--appeared to fade out of it; even the expression of
his face would change, becoming hard and set, and he would deal
you out facts in a dry mechanical way as if reading them in a
book. It grieved me to note this, but I dropped no hint of such
a feeling, and would never have spoken about it but for a quarrel
which came at last to make the one brief solitary break in that
close friendship of years. I got into a bad state of health, and
Abel was not only much concerned about it, but annoyed, as if I
had not treated him well by being ill, and he would even say that
I could get well if I wished to. I did not take this seriously,
but one morning, when calling to see me at the office, he
attacked me in a way that made me downright angry with him. He
told me that indolence and the use of stimulants was the cause of
my bad health.
Pages:
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35