"Oh, indeed!" said Mr. Cassilis, with a sudden, sharp glance, "to what do you refer?"
"Goose-berries, sir!"
"I—ah—beg your pardon?"
"Sir," said Bellew gravely, "all my life I have fostered a secret passion for goose-berries—raw, or cooked,—in pie, pudding or jam, they are equally alluring. Unhappily the American goose-berry is but a hollow mockery, at best—"
"Ha?" said Mr. Cassilis, dubiously.
"Now, in goose-berries, as in everything else, sir, there is to be found the superlative, the quintessence,—the ideal. Consequently I have roamed East and West, and North and South, in quest of it."
"Really?" said Mr. Cassilis, stifling a yawn, and turning towards Miss
Anthea with the very slightest shrug of his shoulders.
"And, in Dapplemere," concluded Bellew, solemnly, "I have, at last, found my ideal—"
"Goose-berry!" added Anthea with a laugh in her eyes.
"Arcadia being a land of ideals!" nodded Bellew.