“And you had a pleasant time? Own to the truth. It was worth while sacrificing sun-baked streets for wide stretches of glorious moorland?”
“Oh, I’ll own to the worth whileness of it,” laughed John, hugging a delicious secret to his heart.
Corin shrugged his shoulders.
“You might be a trifle more expansive,” he grumbled. “You might give me an epitome of your morning’s experiences. There was I, perched like a hen on a henroost, slaving my life out for four hours, while you were enjoying glorious freedom. I said to myself, he’ll return enthusiastic. I’ll have, at least, a second-hand experience of purple moorland, sun-kissed sea, and cool green woods. And all the man has done is to smile oracularly, and admit to beauty when the admission was fairly dragged from his lips. No; don’t begin to rhapsodize now. It’s too late. I wanted spontaneity, a first fine careless rapture. And by dragging, pulling, and tugging, I get a bare admission of beauty grudgingly made.”
John laughed again. It must be confessed that he was in a peculiarly lighthearted mood.
“I’ll attempt no rhapsody, no poetic flights of fancy, since the psychological moment for so doing has, according to you, passed. I’ll give you the mere salient facts of the morning, the chiefest being that I played St. George to the dragon.”
Corin eyed him suspiciously.
“I have an idea I heard you remark ‘no poetic flights of fancy,’ a moment agone,” he suggested.
“I did,” retorted John, “and I adhere to that remark. Here is fact pure and simple. But, for your better convincing, I will state that the dragon had for the moment disguised itself as a goat,—a large, a playful, black and white goat. The disguise was good, I’ll allow, but,” concluded John dramatically, “I penetrated it.”
Corin sighed.