"She's nursing a sick sheep," replied her sister. "Poor Barbara! there is never any fun for her!—not that she wants it as I do, but something always comes in the way to spoil her outings."
"Barbara's an angel," said Peter.
"She is that!" answered Lucy fervently.
He clasped his hands behind his head, and looked up into the face of the girl beside him. He never had any inclination to look at Barbara so; he never lay at her feet and talked nonsense. There was something of a man's attitude towards another man in his way of regarding her. She was strong and self-reliant and high-minded; he only dimly understood her. But that which he did understand drew his deepest reverence. He had two sides to his nature, as most folk have; and though Lucy appealed to the happy, homely, youthful part of him, with Barbara he was a serious-hearted man, who knew that life was no game, and who purposed to live strenuously in his appointed place.
The afternoon wore on towards evening. The sun was getting low, and the church flung a dark shadow on the graveyard. The folk drew together in groups, sat themselves down upon the benches, and streamed in and out of the Wild Boar. Before it, on a plot of grass, the bear was dancing.
It looked mangy and starved. Yet even in its present condition it kept some of the majesty of its early years, when it had been free to wander among the forests of a distant land. Gentle and timid it was among the human beings that stood around, laughing at its clumsy ways, and sometimes prodding it with sticks; but it turned at bay when a snarling dog ventured too near.
The gipsy—a long, lean fellow, whose eyes smouldered—leaned against the horse-trough and piped. He looked, among the fair-haired country folk, as much of an alien as the bear dancing on an English green. His slack, nervy figure needed but a word to make it taut as steel. He had a barbed stick by his side, and a chain, from the animal's collar, fastened to a ring round his wrist. He was much bedizened with coloured ribbons and brass buttons.
Peter stood on the steps of the inn and watched the scene with keen pleasure. He liked the bear, although its eyes were dim with neglect, and its fur clotted and evil-smelling. It suggested to him the infinite variety and complexity of life. Its proper home was in distant forests; it had feelings and instincts which he could not even imagine; its destiny had no parallel with his; yet by its patience, gentleness and power to suffer it was linked with his own nature. He liked the gipsy, for he felt a chord of fellowship between them. Here was one who disdained to sleep, eat and die among the crowd; who lived a roving life in the green lanes, coming and going as he pleased, free as air. Such a life attracted Fleming, who cared more for liberty than a dry bed. He liked the village folk—nay, he loved them, though they stood open-mouthed, like children, and were pleased as children at the ungainly ambling of the bear. He knew that they were stolid, narrow-minded; but round them his affections twined. They were the root from which he sprang.
It was Peter's habit to find some likeness between himself and the world about him. Many of his ideas he had imbibed from Timothy Hadwin, who when he was a child had taught him Latin and Greek, and used every opportunity to impress the boy with a sense of the mystery of the universe.
Life touched life through the three kingdoms. The tiniest flower in the hedgerow and the king on his throne were but links in one great chain. It was this sense of his relationship to the whole living creation that gave breadth to Peter's outlook, intensity to his mind, and power to his bearing. He tried to understand, and he deeply loved all nature. His college friends looked upon him as a crank, yet they respected him greatly; for they once saw him bridle and ride a bucking horse that no one else dared approach.