“You feel better to-day, I hope?”
“Yes, I am unusually well. You are not married, are you?” he asked abruptly.
“No, not yet”—rather startled at the sudden change of topic. “But I hope to marry before long.”
“Hope, hope; that’s what we all say. Don’t let it go beyond that. Hope told a flattering tale. I don’t believe in hope.”
“Why not?” inquired his companion rather anxiously.
“You see this terrace,” he exclaimed, as if he had not heard; “I walk up and down it exactly a hundred times a day; I take a hundred beans in my pocket, and put one of them on that bench every time I come to it. I find it most interesting; only sometimes birds steal my beans, and that puts me out, and I lose count, and I have to begin the whole hundred over again, and I get so tired. But I must do it, or they would be angry.”
“Who would be angry, sir?”
“I forget, just this minute—the beans or the birds.”
“You seem to have wonderfully fine fruit-trees here,” said Mark, after an expressively long silence.
“Yes, the mallees work well, the rascals, because I give them all the vegetables and flowers and fruit, as well as their wages. They make a good thing out of it; the peaches and pears and plums from the Yellow House are celebrated.”