"You might have told me, all the same!" said Diana, pouting a little.
"Dear child, had I done so would you have called me your old pal? It is a title dearer to me than any other." Hereupon she brought him the three-legged stool which, despite his protestations, she forced him to take. And so we began dinner, though often the Tinker would pause, food-laden jackknife in mid-air, to steal amazed and surreptitious glances at his lordship, sitting serenely, the tin plate balanced on his knees, eating with remarkable appetite and gusto.
"D'ye like it, old pal?" questioned Diana suddenly.
"Diana," answered the Ancient Person with his whimsical look, "words are sometimes poor and inadequate—I like it beyond expression."
"That's because it's strange to you an' in the open air—"
"Nay, child, I have eaten strange meals amid strange people in strange, wild places of the earth, but never such a meal as this."
"D'ye mean foreign places—across the sea?" questioned Diana eagerly.
"Yes, I have seen much of the wonders and glories of the world, vasty deserts, trackless forests, stupendous mountains, mighty rivers, and yet—and yet what more wonderful than this little island of ours, what more tenderly beautiful than our green, English countryside? The thunderous roar of plunging cataracts, the cloud-capped pinnacles of mighty mountains may fill the soul with awed and speechless wonder, but for pure joy give me an English coppice of a summer evening when blackbird and thrush are calling, or to sit and hearken to the immemorial music of a brook—Friend Jarvis, you write verses, I believe?"
"Lord, sir—my lord," answered Jeremy, his bronzed cheek flushing, "how should you know that?"
"I learned the fact from Peregrine who spoke of them in such high praise that I should much like to read some of them if you would suffer me—"