“I invited you to it.”
“Precisely, but in the language of the Isle of Guava, words do not mean what they are supposed to mean in the Land of Bacon. I may have transgressed those invisible bounds which you recognise by an instinct of which I am deficient. There are societies which have laws and signs of fellowship known only to the initiated. You belong to one, the great Freemasonry of Aristocratic Culture. You all know one another in it, how—is inconceivable to me, though I watch and puzzle to find the symbol; and your laws, unwritten, I can only guess at, but you all know them, suck them in with mother’s milk. I have been brought up among you, but I have only an idea of your laws, and as for your shibboleth—it escapes me altogether. And now—I do not know whether I have acted rightly or wrongly in telling you how I am situated. I am in terror lest in taking you at your word I may not have grossly offended you, and lest you be now saying in your heart, What an unlicked cub this is! how ignorant of tact, how lacking in good breeding! He should have passed off my invitation with a joke about brambles. He bores me, he is insufferable.”
“I assure you—Mr. Saltren——”
“Excuse my interrupting you. It may, or may not be so. I dare say I am hypersensitive, over-suspicious.”
“And now, Mr. Saltren, I think Giles is waiting for his psalms and lessons.”
“You mean—I have offended you.”
“Not at all. I am sorry for you, but I think you are—excuse the word—morbidly sensitive.”
“You cannot understand me because you have never been in my land. Baron Munchausen says that in the moon the aristocrats when they want to know about the people send their heads among them, but their trunks and hearts remain at home. The heads go everywhere and return with a report of the wants, thoughts and doings of the common people. You are the same. You send your heads to visit us, to enquire about us, to peep at our ways, and search out our goings, but you do not understand us, because you have not been heart and body down to finger-ends and toes among us, and of us—you cannot enter into our necessities and prejudices and gropings. But I see, I bore you. In the tongue of the Isle of Guava you say to me, Giles wants his psalms and lessons. Which being interpreted means, This man is a bramble sticking to my skirts, following, impeding my movements, a drag, a nuisance. I must get rid of him. I wish you a good morning, Miss Inglett; and holy thoughts under the greenwood tree!”
CHAPTER III.
IN THE OWL’S NEST.
Arminell Inglett made the best of her was to the old quarry. She was impatient to be alone, to enjoy the beautiful weather, the spring sights and sound, to recover the elasticity of spirit of which she had been robbed by Sunday-school.