“Well,” said Toboso, “you must have knowed him. He always looked glum, and I've seen him in quad myself.”
“Yes. Sancho Panza. Dulcinea del Toboso.”
“I never knowed that part of it. Dulcinea del Toboso! Well, that's me. You know a ruck of fine names, Elder. It sounds like thirteen trumps, now, don't it?”
Father Wiliston roused himself, and discriminated. “But you look more like Sancho Panza.”
“Do? Well, I never knowed that one. Must've been a Greaser. Dulcinea's good enough.”
Father Wiliston began to feel singularly happy and alive. The regular and even paced Timothy, his fidgeting wife, and the imperious Bettina were to some extent shadows and troubles in the evening of his life. They were careful people, who were hemmed in and restricted, who somehow hemmed in and restricted him. They lived up to precedents. Toboso did not seem to depend on precedents. He had the free speech, the casual inconsequence, the primitive mystery, desired of the boy's will and the wind's will, and travelled after by the long thoughts of youth. He was wind-beaten, burned red by the sun, ragged of coat and beard, huge, fat, wallowing in the ease of his flesh. One looked at him and remembered the wide world full of crossed trails and slumbering swamps.
Father Wiliston had long, straight white hair, falling beside his pale-veined and spiritual forehead and thin cheeks. He propped his forehead on one bony hand, and looked at Toboso with eyes of speculation. If both men were what some would call eccentric, to each other they seemed only companionable, which, after all, is the main thing.
“I have thought of late,” continued Father Wiliston after a pause, “that I should like to travel, to examine human life, say, on the highway. I should think, now, your manner of living most interesting. You go from house to house, do you not?—from city to city? Like Ulysses, you see men and their labors, and you pass on. Like the apostles—who surely were wise men, besides that were especially maintained of God—like them, and the pilgrims to shrines, you go with wallet and staff or merely with Faith for your baggage.”
“There don't nothing bother you in warm weather, that's right,” said Toboso, “except your grub. And that ain't any more than's interesting. If it wasn't for looking after meals, a man on the road might get right down lazy.”
“Why, just so! How wonderful! Now, do you suppose, Mr. Toboso, do you suppose it feasible? I should very much like, if it could be equably arranged, I should very much like to have this experience.”