"I try to understand London," he said. "It is enough for me. I know nothing about Assyria."
Mr. Cowper was a picturesque-looking old gentleman, with kind blue eyes and long white hair.
"It is quite natural," he assented. "You were born in London, without a doubt, you have lived there all your days and you write as one who sees. I was born in a library. I saw no city till I entered college. I had fashioned cities for myself long before then, and dwelt in them."
The girl had taken her place at the tea-table. Burton's eyes followed her admiringly.
"You were brought up in the country?" he asked his host.
"I was born in the City of Strange Imaginings," Mr. Cowper replied. "I read and read until I had learned the real art of fancy. No one who has ever learned it needs to look elsewhere for a dwelling house. It is the realism of your writing which fascinates me so, Mr. Burton. I wish you would stay here and write of my garden; the moorland, too, is beautiful."
"I should like to very much," said Burton.
Mr. Cowper gazed at him in mild curiosity.
"You are a stranger to me, Mr. Burton," he remarked. "My daughter does not often encourage visitors. Pray tell me, how did you make her acquaintance?" "There was a bull," he commenced,—"A cow," she interrupted softly.
"On the moor outside. Your daughter was a little terrified. She accepted my escort after I had driven away the—animal."