'What shall I read?'
He looked at me meditatively. 'You'll find something to the point in there,' he said. He reached up to the little candle-box bookcase over his head, and showed me a little crimson book. It was an anthology. I should think it might be commendably put on the 'Index Expurgatorius' of upcountry missionaries.
It was called 'The Cheerful City,' and dwelt on the delights of civilization and urbanity. Doubtless it may serve a useful purpose, thought I, in reconciling Londoners to their wen; but, here, what does it spell for my delirious Cockney save only desiderium?
I read him two or three selections obediently, but without enthusiasm. Were they from Herrick and Charles Lamb? I rather think they were.
Afterwards he asked me for a few verses of the Gospel. I cheered up.
'What would you like?'
'Oh, that story at the end of St. John. I've often thought of it since I was so cold and wet; and got to your camp-fire. "The fire of coals, and fish laid thereon, and bread," that's it.'
I read with a will, but rather sadly.
'That's it,' he said. 'It seems to bring back the fog, and going to early Service past that coffee-stall, and the smell of that shop next to the Surrey Arms.'
I thought of his homely comparison after I had left him for the night. It moved me strangely. I read the letter he had lent me the letter of Cecilia, who found the Berkshire moors so banal. Yes, she promised to prove a very undesirable help-meet on the veld, so far as I could judge. I thought over things generally that night, and I made up my mind to make a Quixotic offer in the morning. I would offer to take on Leonard's work. Let him go home and be happy in his scented town, with his intolerantly urban (or suburban) Cecilia. He was splendid stuff. He might do much, surely, in that quaint atmosphere of light and locomotion and fragrance that his sense of romance demanded. Here Cecilia would surely be either impossible or a very great nuisance. While, even without Cecilia, Leonard did not seem well suited in his sphere, and I judged that he would soon be rotten with fever and wouldn't last.