"They might have told you, madam, that I am a great fool."
Ha! a gleam of true light. She warmed toward him. She thought of Burns plowing up a mouse. But she was skeptical of poets. They have a contempt for their patrons if their wares do not sell.
"You credit them with too shrewd a discovery," she replied.
"I simply give them credit for ordinary eyesight, madam."
"You prove the contrary." She smiled upon him. "They tell me that you came like a mist, out of the mysterious woods."
"A fog from the marsh," he replied, laughing; and the "peach" laughed, too—more music from the North Sea. He saw the pink of her arm through the gauze of her sleeve. Mrs. Goodwin thought that he knew nothing about women, and she was right, but, as a rule, if rule can be applied, a woman thinks this of a man when, indeed, he has mastered innocent hearts to make wantons of them.
"Where is your field?" the discoverer inquired.
"Over yonder, where the sun is hottest."
"And your house?"
"Over on the hill, yonder, where the wind will blow coldest in winter."