“ABSOLVO!”
“Absolvo, absolvo!” echoed Galatea.
Cheerfully, but with subdued spirits, Bos, Equus and Co. gathered about their new friends, accepting their forgiveness with various tokens of gratitude. The pig lay down at Galatea’s feet, grunting contentedly, while the colt brushed her cheek with his velvet muzzle. The Poet felt a warm nose in his hand, and was not amazed to find it was his late enemy’s, the goat’s.
“Well, darn my skin!” said Gabriel.
“Galatea, I think we shall do very well—very well indeed,” said the Poet.
II
Fair Warning to the Horseless
Seated on the veranda, in a low lawn-chair which caused his long shanks to thrust his angular knees up to the level of his chin, the Poet was perusing the Odes of Horace in the original text, and pencilling their English equivalent on the leaves of a small writing-pad. His handwriting was large and careless. Every minute or two he tore a filled sheet from the pad and dropped it on the edge of the veranda floor at his side. A straggling honeysuckle vine concealed from him the fact that William was present, and that, as each sheet fell to the floor, the goat was consuming it with every evidence of appreciation. Probably never before had a translation of Horace met with such instant success.
But presently William, becoming impatient at the Poet’s deliberation, seized a sheet out of his hand and stood detected. At the same instant a musical peal of laughter from the open window of the breakfast room proved that the Poet’s sister had been a delighted witness of the disaster. After one startled look about him, the Poet realized that the goat’s attentions had been indeed thorough. He had recourse to his customary whimsical philosophy.
“Galatea,” said the Poet gravely, “do you observe that the whole of my manuscript has been accepted without reading? That is the highest compliment possible to pay a poet.”