Everybody knew Lord Maulevrier, so there was no difficulty about getting admission to Wordsworth's garden and Wordsworth's house, and after Mr. Hammond and his companions had explored these, they went back to the shores of the little lake, and climbed that rocky eminence upon which the poet used to sit, above the placid waters of silvery Rydal. It is a lovely spot, and that narrow lake, so poor a thing were magnitude the gauge of beauty, had a soft and pensive loveliness in the clear afternoon light.
'Poor Wordsworth' sighed Lesbia, as she stood on the grassy crag looking down on the shining water, broken in the foreground by fringes of rushes, and the rich luxuriance of water-lilies. 'Is it not pitiable to think of the years he spent in this monotonous place, without any society worth speaking of, with only the shabbiest collection of books, with hardly any interest in life except the sky, and the hills, and the peasantry?'
'I think Wordsworth's was an essentially happy life, in spite of his narrow range,' answered Hammond. 'You, with your ardent youth and vivid desire for a life of action, cannot imagine the calm blisses of reverie and constant communion with nature. Wordsworth had a thousand companions you and I would never dream of; for him every flower that grows was an individual existence—almost a soul.'
'It was a mild kind of lunacy, an everlasting opium dream without the opium; but I am grateful to him for living such a life, since it has bequeathed us some exquisite poetry,' said Lesbia, who had been too carefully cultured to fleer or flout at Wordsworth.
'I do believe there's an otter just under that bank,' cried Molly, who had been watching the obvious excitement of her bandy-legged hound; and she rushed down to the brink of the water, leaping lightly from stone to stone, and inciting the hound to business.
'Let him alone, can't you?' roared Maulevrier; 'leave him in peace till he's wanted. If you disturb him now he'll desert his holt, and we may have a blank day. The hounds are to be out to-morrow.'
'I may go with you?' asked Mary, eagerly.
'Well, yes, I suppose you'll want to be in it.' Molly and her brother went on an exploring ramble along the edge of the water towards Ambleside, leaving John Hammond in Lesbia's company, but closely guarded by Miss Müller. These three went to look at Nab Cottage, where poor Hartley Coleridge ended his brief and clouded days; and they had gone some way upon their homeward walk before they were rejoined by Maulevrier and Mary, the damsel's kilted skirt considerably the worse for mud and mire.
'What would grandmother say if she were to see you!' exclaimed Lesbia, looking contemptuously at the muddy petticoat.
'I am not going to let her see me, so she will say nothing,' cried Mary, and then she called to the dogs, 'Ammon, Agag, Angelina;' and the three fox terriers flew along the road, falling over themselves in the swiftness of their flight, darting, and leaping, and scrambling over each other, and offering the spectators the most intense example of joyous animal life.