He turned some leaves, while scanning me covertly and sourly; and I exclaimed becomingly over their contents. On each was a picture of a saint, hastily illuminated, and of many insects most beautifully coloured after nature. The saints, it is true, were pigmies, and the moths life size; but it was through the former that this uncivilised Churchman justified himself in a secular hobby. He was, as I came to learn presently, a crazy collector of the small game of fields and hedges, and had only drifted into the Church after a particularly fine specimen of the Painted Lady, or some such immoral creature.
I tried to appreciate in order to conciliate him; but I could see that my flattery was not expert, or perhaps fulsome enough for his taste. Presently, on the score that my mere neighbourhood threatened the lustre of his illuminations, he shut the book, and placed it discontentedly by his side.
“Did you do it all by yourself?” I asked.
“Ay,” he grunted.
“And why did you bring it up here, when”—
He smacked his great hand on his knee, interrupting me—
“If you haven’t the intelligence to see—sooner part with my blood to those Vandals! There; let the book alone, and tell me what brought you here.”
“I’ve said already—I was escaping from my master.”
“A master sweep?”
“Yes.”