‘As long as fish and game are your only society, you will become more and more morne and self-absorbed.’
‘Really fish were the last things of which I was thinking when you came. My whole heart was filled with the beauty of nature, and nothing else.’
There was an opening for one of Argemone’s preconcerted orations.
‘Had you no better occupation,’ she said gently, ‘than nature, the first day of returning to the open air after so frightful and dangerous an accident? Were there no thanks due to One above?’
Lancelot understood her.
‘How do you know that I was not even then showing my thankfulness?’
‘What! with a cigar and a fishing-rod?’
‘Certainly. Why not?’
Argemone really could not tell at the moment. The answer upset her scheme entirely.
‘Might not that very admiration of nature have been an act of worship?’ continued our hero. ‘How can we better glorify the worker than by delighting in his work?’