"And after all," said Mrs. Fielden with a contemplative air, "how silly philosophy is! I asked somebody the other day the meaning of a syllogism, and really I don't think I ever heard anything quite so foolish."
"It is quite beneath your notice," I said.
"I did think of asking you if I might come over sometimes and read these musty volumes of yours."
"You would probably find them as uninteresting as I am," I said.
Mrs. Fielden looked as if she thought that might be possible, and did not press the matter.
I dislike being disloyal to my books, for they are such good friends of mine. But a great wish came to me then to get up and do something, instead of for ever reading the doings and the thoughts of other people. I thought how much I should like to live again, and just for once sleep on the veldt with the stars overhead, or longed that I could get astride of a horse, and follow a burst of the hounds over the wet fields in England. And so thinking I turned on the sofa and said petulantly, "I wish Maud Jamieson would not sing that song."
"Oh, that we two were maying," she sang, in the song that tells of love and separation, and the longings and heartbreaks which it is much better not to speak about, and the things which we want and cannot have.
"I hate yearners," I said. "Why can't she sing something cheerful?"
Mrs. Fielden rose from her chair by the fire and crossed the hearthrug, and came and sat down on my sofa. She took my hand in hers and said: "Poor boy! is it very hard sometimes?"
"Of course," said Palestrina, as we went upstairs to bed after our guests had departed, "you are sure to feel tired. The little party has been too much for you, I'm afraid. It was very tiresome for you having to leave us all."