"No, I don't. What you've said is quite enough, and we don't want to talk about it any more at all. Let's go and find Pamela, and Fred. We might have another game before tea."
Horsham was quite willing to go and find Pamela, though he had unexpectedly enjoyed his chat with Judith, who struck him as a girl of quite remarkable intelligence. He told her so, as they walked together. "Of course you were only a kid when I was here last," he said, making allowances for her, and for himself.
"Yes," said Judith. "And you weren't much to write home about, either."
He looked surprised at this speech, until she laughed, when he laughed too. "You and Pamela both like chaffing a fellow, don't you?" he said. "I suppose some fellows wouldn't see it, and be offended. But I'm rather quick at seeing things, and I don't mind."
Judith suddenly felt an immense liking for him, compounded in a curious way of respect and tenderness. He was a heavily built young man, though his figure was upright, and had the activity of his youth. His face was neither handsome nor ugly, but there was a look of honesty and simplicity in it that gave it character. She felt a strong compunction at having prepared a trap for him. "I was chaffing you when I advised you to recite poetry to Pamela," she said hurriedly. "Don't you. At least, don't recite 'The Wreck of the Hesperus.' She'd think that tosh; and so do I."
This disturbed him for a moment, but he soon recovered. "I was an ass not to see what you were driving at," he said. "But you must remember that I never said I thought that was a fine poem."
"No, you didn't," she said soothingly. "And I don't suppose either of us really care much for what they would call fine poetry. What I do like of Longfellow's is his 'Psalm of Life'."
"Do you mean that?" he asked; and when she said she did he repeated slowly and impressively, as they walked beneath the trees:
"'Life is real, life is earnest,
And the grave is not its goal.
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.'