"The same, if you call it beautiful."
"I have sketched it several times from a distance already" (beatification of Roscoria!), "although I have only recently come to live here. Of course I know your name. Have you not a great friend, a Mr. Tregurtha?"
"Rather!" cried Louis, "and I am glad that people connect the fact with my name."
"Why, of course," said Lyndis, looking up with kind eyes; "you two are called 'Damon and Pythias.'"
"I dare say. I am awfully proud of Dick (that's Tregurtha, Miss Villiers); he is a fine fellow, and he manages me completely. Whatever he suggests seems to be better, somehow, than what I can think of myself. It's his nature, you know; there's no system about it whatever: that's just where it lies. He has a way with him; I have no way with me; and all the Philosophy in the world won't give me one. Only, I hold that he makes one radical mistake in judging of my system of education: he won't let me thrash my own boys when he can help it, which I think is rather hard on any preceptor."
"Oh, it is!" said Lyndis, sympathetically; "but I dare say you are too fond of correction, or whence this dudgeon at being debarred from it?"
"Well—— But if there is such an anomaly as 'righteous indignation,' what a fervor of godliness must the sight of the average boy excite in the breast of the right-minded schoolmaster! And can indignation find a better vent than blows? Why, even the long-suffering Moses had to break something when he found his Hebrews dancing round a calf!"
"I would not adopt a profession which develops the indignation to so great an extent," said Lyndis, rather amused by her companion's impetuosity.
"Do not say that, Miss Villiers; whatever we have most at heart will disgust us sometimes. We have our ideal (or we ought to have), and the reality is coarse, indeed, in comparison, but it is better than nothing at all; and is it not in itself an ennobling thing to be constantly engaged in a tremendous struggle, whether the vantage be to you or no?"
Roscoria looked at Lyndis with a far-away intensity and a sad determination of expression, which made her think she had never seen so enthusiastic a young man.