“Well!—and wherefore should any quit home until he be pushed out?”
“Ask at Hal,” said the Rector laughing.
“No have I so? Yea, twenty times twice told: but all I may win from the young ne’er-do-well is wise saws that the world must be peopled (why so, I marvel?),—and that there is pleasure in aventure (a deal more, I reckon, in keeping of one’s carcase safe and sound!)—and that some men must needs dwell in strange lands, and the like. Well-a-day! wherefore should they so? Tell me that, Robin Tremayne.”
“I will, old friend, when mine amaze is o’er at hearing of such words from one Ned Underhill.”
“Amaze!—what need, trow?”
“But little need, when one doth call to mind that the most uncommon of all things is consistency. Only when one hath been used for forty years and more to see a man (I name him not) ever foremost in all perilous aventure, and thrusting him forward into whatsoever danger there were as into a bath of rosewater, ’tis some little surprise that taketh one to hear from the self-same party that ’tis never so much sweeter to keep safe and sound at home.”
Mr Underhill threw his head back, and indulged in a hearty peal of laughter.
“On my word, Robin, thou ticklest me sore! But what, lad!—may a man not grow prudent in his old age?”
“By all manner of means, or in his youth no less; but this will I say, that the last prudent man I looked to set eyes on should bear the name of Underhill.”
“Well-a-day! Here is Eunice made up of prudence.”