"A very fair question," he returned, with a smile. "Just because it is soothing from the very absence of beauty. I would far rather, however, if I were only following my taste, take the barest bit of the moor above, with a streak of the cold sky over it. That gives room."
"You would like to put a skylark in it, wouldn't you?"
"That I would if I knew how. I see you know what I mean. But the mere romantic I never had much taste for; though if you saw the kind of pictures I try to paint, you would not wonder that I take sketches of places like this, while in my heart of hearts I do not care much for them. They are so different, and just therefore they are good for me. I am not working now; I am only playing."
"With a view to working better afterwards, I have no doubt," I answered.
"You are right there, I hope," was his quiet reply, as he turned and walked back to the island.
He had not made a step towards joining us. He had only taken his hat off to the ladies. He was gaining ground upon me rapidly.
"Have you quarrelled with our new friend, Harry?" said my wife, as I came up to her.
She was sitting on a stone. Turner and Wynnie were farther off towards the foot of the fall.
"Not in the least," I answered, slightly outraged—I did not at first know why—by the question. "He is only gone to his work, which is a duty belonging both to the first and second tables of the law."
"I hope you have asked him to come home to our early dinner, then," she rejoined.