"I don't see why you should talk of your friends as if they were racehorses or prize dogs."
"Well, there's a lot of truth in the metaphor. You know yourself what a mess of it he might make. Say some good woman got hold of him--some good woman, for we will put aside the horrible suggestion of the adventuress. I suppose he'd be what you call a 'good husband.' He would become a magistrate and a patron of local agricultural societies and flower shows. And eveybody would talk about him as a great success in life; but we--you and I and Tommy--who know him better, would feel that it was all a ghastly failure."
Mr. Lewis Haystoun's character erred in its simplicity, for it was at the mercy of every friend for comment.
"What makes you dread the women so?" asked Arthur with a smile.
"I don't dread 'em. They are all that's good, and a great deal better than most men. But then, you know, if you get a man really first-class he's so much better than all but the very best women that you've got to look after him. To ordinary beggars like myself it doesn't matter a straw, but I won't have Lewie throwing himself away."
"Then is the ancient race of the Haystouns to disappear from the earth?"
"Oh, there are women fit for him, sure enough, but you won't find them at every garden party. Why, to find the proper woman would be the making of the man, and I should never have another doubt about him. But I am afraid. He's a deal too kindly and good-natured, and he'd marry a girl to-morrow merely to please her. And then some day quite casually he would come across the woman who was meant by Providence for him, and there would be the devil to pay and the ruin of one good man. I don't mean that he'd make a fool of himself or anything of that sort, for he's not a cad; but in the middle of his pleasant domesticity he would get a glimpse of what he might have been, and those glimpses are not forgotten."
"Why, George, you are getting dithyrambic," said Arthur, still smiling, but with a new vague respect in his heart.
"For you cannot harness the wind or tie--tie the bonds of the wild ass," said George, with an air of quotation. "At any rate, we're going to look after him. He is a good chap and I've got to see him through."