'Oh yes, the birds are happy; all nature is happy so long as it is free. It is in the cage that the bird mopes, and in the pot that the plant sickens.'
Had Philip looked in her face he would have seen a strange expression of triumph pass over it. She had carried her first point and gained his interest.
'Here,' she said, 'is a large rock above the water; let us sit on it, and I will tell you about myself. You had no confidence in me, and would not give me your story. I will return good for evil, and show you my past. I agree with you, there will be no view of the mountains above Dissentis from the col. It is not worth our while going on. Besides, I am tired.'
She took a seat on a broad boulder that had fallen from the mountains, and hung fast, wedged on one side, disengaged on the other, over the crystal water that, stirred by the light wind, lapped its supports. Looking into the clear flood beneath, they could see the char darting about, enjoying the sun that penetrated the water and made it to them an element of diffused light.
Artemisia pointed to them, and said:
'Who would not rather be one of these than a goldfish in a glass bottle?'
Philip at once recalled the pond at Mergatroyd, with the hot water spurted into it from the engine, in which the goldfish teemed, and the globes in every cottage-window supplied with the unfortunate captives from this pond, swimming round and round all day, all night, every year, seeing nothing novel, without an interest, a zest in life. Such had his career been; he, a fish—not a gold one, nor even a silver one till recently, but quite a common brown fish—in a common glass receiver full of stale water, renewed periodically, but always flat.
He looked at the darting char with interest.
'We are in the land of freedom,' said Miss Durham. 'Then don't stand on the rock like a semaphore. Sit down beside me, and let your feet dangle over the water. Oh! as Polixenes says, "to be boy eternal!"'
'"With such a day to-morrow as to-day,"' added Philip, completing the quotation, as he seated himself on the rock.