By this time colt and driver had been whirled away in a cloud, Elijah-like.
"Nice kind of a girl that!" said Flint to [Pg 15] himself with savage, solitaire sarcasm. He felt that he had appeared like a fool; and it must be a generous soul which can forgive one who has been both cause and witness of such humiliation. To conquer his irritation, Flint proceeded to take his injured rod to pieces, and repack it gloomily in its bag of green felt. When he looked up again, all petty annoyances faded out of his mind, for there ahead of him, behind the little patch of pines, lay the great cool, cobalt stretch of ocean, unfathomably deep, unutterably blue.
The young man felt a vague awe and exaltation tugging at his heart. But the only outward expression they gained was a throwing back of the head, and a deep indrawing of the breath, followed by the quite uninspired exclamation, "Holloa, there's the ocean!"
"Why shouldn't it be there?" inquired the practical Marsden. "You didn't think it had got up and moved inland after you left, did you?"
"Well, I didn't know," Flint answered carelessly. "I've seen it come in a good two hundred feet while I was here, and I couldn't tell how far it might have been carried, allowing for its swelling emotions over my departure. But I'm glad to see it at the old stand still; and there's the pond too, and the cross-roads and the [Pg 16] Nepaug Inn. I declare, Marsden, it is like its owner,—grows better looking as it gets old and gray."
Marsden's face assumed that grim New England smile which gives notice that a compliment has been received and its contents noted, but that the recipient does not commit himself to undue satisfaction therein.
"Yes," he responded, "the old inn weathers the winters down here pretty middlin' well; but it's gettin' kind o' broken down, and its doors creak in a storm like bones that's got the rheumatiz. I wish I could afford to give it a coat o' paint."
"Ah!" said Flint, with a shrug, "I hope, for my part, you never can! I can see it now as it would be if you had your way—spick and span in odious, glaring freshness, insulting the gray old ocean. The only respectable buildings in America are those which the owner is too poor to improve."
Marsden turned sulky. He did not more than half understand Flint's remarks; but he had a dim impression that he was being lectured, and he did not enjoy it; few of us do.
Flint, however, was wholly unconscious of having given offence. It would have been difficult to make him understand what there was objectionable in his remark, and indeed the [Pg 17] offence lay more in the tone than in the words. Flint's sympathies were imperfect, and he had no gift for discerning the sensitiveness which lay outside his sphere of vision. To all that came within that rather limited range, he was kind and considerate; beyond, he saw nothing and therefore felt nothing.