They did not interfere with his work, and sauntered back to an early dinner, and Bart saw no more of them until night.

He closed out his work early for the day, and spent the evening with them and his mother.

Henry naturally inquired about his old acquaintances, and Bart answered graphically.  He was in a mood of reckless gayety.  He took them up, one after another, and in a few happy strokes presented them in ludicrous caricature, irresistible for its hits of humor, and sometimes for wit, and sometimes sarcasm—­a stream of sparkle and glitter, with queer quotations of history, poetry, and Scripture, always apt, and the latter not always irreverent.  Ranney had a capacity to enjoy a medley, and both of the young men abandoned themselves to uncontrollable laughter; and even the good mother, who tried in vain to stop her reckless son, surprised herself with tears streaming down her cheeks.  Bart, for the most part, remained grave, and occasionally Edward helped him out with a suggestion, or contributed a dry and pungent word of his own.

As the fit subsided, Henry, half serious and half laughing, turned to him:  “Oh, Bart, I thought you had reformed, and become considerate and thoughtful, and I find that you are worse than ever.”

“But, Henry, what’s the use of having neighbors and acquaintances and friends, if one cannot serve them up to his guests; and only think, I’ve gone about for six months with the odds and ends of ’flat, stale and unprofitable’ things accumulating in and about him—­the said Bart—­until, as a sanitary measure, I had to utter them.”

“How do you feel after it?” inquired Henry.

“Rather depressed, though I hope to tone up again.”

“Bart,” said Henry, gravely, “I haven’t seen much of you for two or three years; I used to get queer glimpses of you in your letters, and I must look through your mental and moral make-up some time.”

“You will find me like the sterile, stony glebe, which, when the priest reached in his career of invocation and blessing—­’Here,’ said the holy father, ’prayers and supplications are of no avail.  This must have manure.’  Grace would, I fear, be wasted on me, and our good mother would willingly see me under your subsoiling and fertilizing hand.”

“Do you ever seriously think?”

“I? oh yes! such thoughts as I can think.  I think of the wondrously beautiful in nature, and am glad.  I think of the wretched race of men, and am sad.  I think of my shallow self, and am mad.”

Henry, with unchanged gravity:  “Do you believe in anything?”

“Yes, I believe fully in our mother; a good deal in you, though my faith is shaken a little just now; and am inclined to great faith in your friend Mr. Ranney.”

All smile but Henry.  “Yes, all that of course, but abstract propositions.  Have you faith, in anything?”