“How do you know that I am content?” asked Rees, quietly.
“Oh, pray forgive my taking such liberty! I got excited, carried away,” murmured Amos, showing great irritation with his own indiscreet boldness.
“I’m not offended. I repeat: how do you know I’m contented?” asked Rees, swinging his tennis racquet.
“How do I know?” echoed Amos, diffidently, but with some surprise. “Why, because with natures like yours, full of energy, and fire, and daring, to will is to do. And that you have never done anything—anything great, I mean—is proof enough to me that you have never willed to do anything; that, in fact, the air of Carstow is responsible for the waste of a fine nature. Now you said you would not be offended, Mr. Pennant, and I hold you to your word.”
He made a feint of moving away, but Rees detained him by a gracefully imperious gesture. The lad’s complexion was flushed now with something more than the sun’s heat; his candid face showed a very becoming boyish shame and modesty.
“You do me a lot more than justice, Goodhare,” said he half laughing. “You make me ashamed of my own idleness, not for the first time, I do assure you, though. You see I’ve been spoilt; I know that; but it’s so jolly that one hasn’t the strength of mind to wish people wouldn’t encourage one in one’s evil courses.”
“What evil courses? I’ve never heard a word about you in that way,” said the librarian, whose eyes had glowed with an ugly light at this suggestion.
“Oh, nothing worse than my besetting sin, idling, which they say is the parent of all others,” said Rees, looking up with his handsome, frank young face, on which was no trace of any passion worse than boyish vanity.
Goodhare’s face fell, though its change of expression was not noticeable enough for his ingenuous companion to remark it.
“You see, dear old Lord St. Austell is ever so much too good to me,” continued Rees with an affectionate inflection; “and while there are always his horses for me to ride and his coverts for me to shoot over, the temptation for me to do nothing else is too great.”