"Oh, to be like you, Tray—and secrete love and good-will from morn till night, from night till morning—like saliva, without effort! with never a moment's cessation of flow, even in disgrace and humiliation! How much better to love than to be loved—to love as you do, my Tray—so warmly, so easily, so unremittingly—to forgive all wrongs and neglect and injustice so quickly and so well—and forget a kindness never! Lucky dog that you are!
"'Oh! could I feel as I have felt, or be as I have been,
Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanished scene,
As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish tho' they be,
So 'midst this withered waste of life those tears would flow to me!'
"What do you think of those lines, Tray? I love them, because my mother taught them to me when I was about your age—six years old, or seven! and before the bard who wrote them had fallen; like Lucifer, son of the morning! Have you ever heard of Lord Byron, Tray? He too, like Ulysses, loved a dog, and many people think that's about the best there is to be said of him nowadays! Poor Humpty Dumpty! Such a swell as he once was! 'Not all the king's horses, nor all the—'"
Here Tray jumped up suddenly and bolted—he saw some one else he was fond of, and ran to meet him. It was the vicar, coming out of his vicarage.
A very nice-looking vicar—fresh, clean, alert, well tanned by sun and wind and weather—a youngish vicar still; tall, stout, gentlemanlike, shrewd, kindly, wordly, a trifle pompous, and authoritative more than a trifle; not much given to abstract speculation, and thinking fifty times more of any sporting and orthodox young country squire, well-inched and well-acred (and well-whiskered), than of all the painters in Christendom.
"'When Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug of war,'" thought Little Billee; and he felt a little uncomfortable. Alice's father had never loomed so big and impressive before, or so distressingly nice to look at.
"Welcome, my Apelles, to your ain countree, which is growing quite proud of you, I declare! Young Lord Archie Waring was saying only last night that he wished he had half your talent! He's crazed about painting, you know, and actually wants to be a painter himself! The poor dear old marquis is quite sore about it!"
With this happy exordium the parson stopped and shook hands; and they both stood for a while, looking seaward. The parson said the usual things about the sea—its blueness; its grayness; its greenness; its beauty; its sadness; its treachery.
"'Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable sea!'"
"Who indeed!" answered Little Billee, quite agreeing. "I vote we don't, at all events." So they turned inland.