"But we may take our own time for setting sail!" said Lucy.

"Ay, this comes of talking in metaphor," rejoined Brandon, smiling; "they
who begin it always get the worst of it. In plain words, dear Lucy, I
can give no more time to my own ailments. A lawyer cannot play truant in
term-time without--"

"Losing a few guineas!" said Lucy, interrupting him.

"Worse than that,--his practice and his name."

"Better those than health and peace of mind."

"Out on you, no!" said Brandon, quickly, and almost fiercely. "We waste
all the greenness and pith of our life in striving to gain a
distinguished slavery; and when it is gained, we must not think that an
humble independence would have been better. If we ever admit that
thought, what fools, what lavish fools, we have been! No!" continued
Brandon, after a momentary pause, and in a tone milder and gayer, though
not less characteristic of the man's stubbornness of will, "after losing
all youth's enjoyments and manhood's leisure, in order that in age the
mind, the all-conquering mind, should break its way at last into the
applauding opinions of men, I should be an effeminate idler indeed, did I
suffer, so long as its jarring parts hold together, or so long as I have
the power to command its members, this weak body to frustrate the labour
of its better and nobler portion, and command that which it is ordained
to serve."

Lucy knew not while she listened, half in fear, half in admiration, to
her singular relation, that at the very moment he thus spoke, his disease