“Because he has had the wit to find out what he likes, and to do it all the time.”
“And what is that?” asked the girl.
“He sits by a stream and looks at the water. Then he lies on his back and looks at the sky. Then he whistles, chuckles, what you please to call it, and the thrushes come scudding out of the bushes and chuckle back at him.”
“Is that not rather uncanny?” asked Madge.
“Most uncanny. Some day, as I tell him, he will see Pan. And I shall then have to attend a funeral.”
The girl’s eyebrows wrinkled into a frown.
“Pan?” she said.
“Yes; he is the God of ‘Go as you please!’ And his temple is a lunatic asylum. But don’t be alarmed. The Hermit won’t go into a lunatic asylum yet awhile.”
“The Hermit?”
“Yes, the Hermit is Merivale. Because he lives quite alone in the New Forest. He never reads, he hardly ever sees anybody, he never does anything. He used to write at one time.”