Mr. Allonby, as will have been gathered from this fragment, was not a strikingly coherent thinker; but to-day he was certainly more wool-gathering than usual, and he had not even strength to be angry with himself for the same.
"Temperament," he went on, lazily "national temperament, is entirely the result of climatic influence. I fancy I've heard that sentiment before—I have a dim idea that I have heard it frequently; but I have never till this moment realised it thoroughly. I now give it the sanction of my unqualified assent. They say of us, that no Englishman understands how to flâner. How the devil could anyone flâner in the shades of a London fog? Is east wind conducive to lounging in the centres of squares? or a ceaseless downpour the best accompaniment to a meal taken out of doors? No, indeed! Give me only a landscape like the present, and six weeks of days such as this, and I will undertake to rival the veriest flâneur that ever strolled in a Neapolitan market. How sweet-tempered I should grow, too! Even now I recall, dimly as in a dream, the herds of cross and disagreeable people who struggle into omnibuses at Piccadilly Circus. Why, oh, why do they do it? Do they really imagine it worth the trouble? Why don't they tear off their mittens and mackintoshes, fling away their tall hats, their parcels, their gamps, and make one simultaneous rush for the Island Valley of Avilion?"
And, as he thus mused, arose straightway before his imagination—which was keen—a vision of such a crowd as emanates, on a wet night, from a Metropolitan railway-station—of such a crowd pouring from an imaginary terminus, and flocking down that poetic village street, inundating the grass-grown curve of beach in the bay, swarming in a black herd up the warm red sides of the peaceful cliff.
"Jove!" he ejaculated, under his breath, "how they would spoil the place!"
And he checked his philanthropic desire that all his fellow Londoners should come to learn lounging in this ideal village. His beatific musings were broken into by the appearance of the inn-keeper's young daughter, "Mary, the maid of the inn," as he had named her, though her parents had christened her Sarah.
She came walking awkwardly through the cool dark passage, and poked her pretty, tow-colored head round the doorway, to obtain a side scrutiny of her father's guest, who was an object of great interest to her.
"Me mother said I was t'ask yer if yer was goin' to get your dinner aout, same as yesterday, or if yer'd get yer dinner here to-day?"
This question brought Allonby's thoughts home to a sense of forgotten duty. The spot he had yesterday selected, whence to paint his projected picture, was a mile along the valley, and the day was passing; so far he had been conspicuously successful in his efforts to become a lounger.
"I wonder if your mother would tie me up some dinner in a handkerchief?" said he. "I had none yesterday, because it was too far to come back."
Then, as the girl disappeared, he rose, stretched, and told himself that he was a fool to have put off his tramp till the hottest hour of the day, when it would be quite impossible to get an inch of shade, either side of the way.