“You’re usually at Grainger’s at this hour. I’m on my way there. If you are going to-night we had better keep together.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Matt.
He went into the chemist’s to inquire their whereabouts, and feeling a little stiff, had the sudden idea of laying out his last coppers in arnica; then he began to pilot his master with a sense of lofty responsibility. But they walked in silence, mutually embarrassed.
Tarmigan coughed lengthily.
“Ought you to be out on a night like this, sir?” Matt ventured to say.
“Duty, my boy, duty,” rejoined Tarmigan, gruffly.
“But you are not bound to go, are you, sir?” Matt remonstrated, remembering that Tarmigan’s services were a voluntary sacrifice at the shrine of Art.
“I am not forced by an outsider, if that’s what you mean,” said Tarmigan. “But that wouldn’t be duty, that would be necessity—at least, in my definition.”
“Then duty is only what you feel you ought to do,” said Matt.
“Decidedly. Any man who knows what true Art is is bound to hand it down to the next generation, especially in an age when there is so much false doctrine in the air.”