The next morning the men were off early to inspect the new yacht and to assist Walter in “bending on” the last make-shift sail. Jawn, however, went reluctantly.
“It’s a beautiful view from here,” he objected lazily; “why go down into it and mess it up with us? We don’t help the landscape much. We’re not a set of Corot dancing wood-nymphs.”
Richard tried to tell him that it was imperative to study Walter at first hand.
“Nymphs, now,” Jawn went on, boldly disregarding all Richard’s patter. “Nymphs, now, is a good suggestive word. It stimulates the rhyming sense. You see there a hard word and you say to yourself, Can it be done? And you reply, If it is the business of a man to do ’t I’ll do ’t. U-m!...”
He waved a large forefinger, beating time to a story of “two pale gentleman nymphs” made ineffably fragile through the fact that their “forbears were lacking in lymphs.”
Walter had gone on ahead. Richard and Jawn were following slowly.
“I had rather stay and add more kindling to my fire of devotion.” Jawn turned in the road and flung a stage kiss at the Ionic columns.
“It is a fine old house,” grinned Richard; “I don’t wonder at your devotion to it.”
“Humph!” Jawn grunted as he trudged down the hill. “Do you think I am attached to the architecture like a bit of indecent ivy? It’s not a parasite, I am. I’m a—what’s an amorite, friend Richard? Hasn’t it something to do with the divine passion?”
“Amorite?” Richard studied. “That’s the sexton, isn’t it? The chap who marches ahead of the rector carrying a banner or something. You wouldn’t do for that at all, Jawn.”