“Roger wearies of Leighstone, you perceive,” said my father. “Well, I was restless once myself; but the gout laid hold of me early in life, and it has kept its hold.”
“Now, Mr. Goodal, in all your wanderings, tell me where you have seen anything so delightful as this? Have you seen a ruin more venerable than S. Wilfrid’s, nodding to sleep like a gray old monk on the top of the hill there? Every stone of it has a history; some of them gay, many of them grave. Look at the Priory nestling down below—history again. See how gently the Leigh wanders away through the country. Every cottage and farm on its banks I know, and those in them. Could you find a sweeter perfume in all the world than steals up from my own garden here, where all the flowers are mine, and I sometimes think half know me? All around is beauty and peace, and has been so ever since I was a child. Why, then, should I wish to wander?”
Something more liquid even than their light glistened in Fairy’s eyes, as she turned them on Kenneth at the close. He seemed startled at her sudden outburst, and, after a moment, said almost gravely:
“You are right, Miss Herbert. The beauty that we do not know we may admire, but hardly love. It is like a painting that we glance at, and pass on to see something else. There is no sense of ownership about it. I have wandered, with a crippled friend by my side, through art galleries where all that was beautiful in nature and art was drawn up in a way to fascinate the eye and delight the senses. Yet my crippled friend never suffered by contrast; never felt his deformity there. Knowledge, association, friendship, love—these are the great beautifiers. The little that we can really call our own is dearer to us than all the world—is our world, in fact. An Italian sunset steals and enwraps the senses into, as it were, a third heaven. A London fog is one of the most hideous things in this world; yet a genuine Londoner finds something in his native fog dear to him as the sunset to the Italian, and I confess to the barbarism myself. On our arrival the other day we were greeted by a yellow, dense, smoke-colored fog, such as London alone can produce. It was more than a year since I had seen one, and I enjoyed it. I breathed freely again, for I was at home. You will understand, then, how I appreciate your enthusiasm about Leighstone; and if Leighstone had many like Miss Herbert, I can well understand why its people should be content to stay at home.”
Nellie laughed. “I am afraid, Mr. Goodal, that you have brought back something more than your taste for fogs and your homely Saxon from Italy.”
“Yes, a more rooted love for my own land, a truer appreciation of my countrymen, and more ardent admiration of my fair countrywomen.”
“Ah! now you are talking Italian. But, honestly, which country do you find the most interesting of all you have seen?”
“My own, Miss Herbert.”
“The nation of shop-keepers!” ejaculated I.
“Of Magna Charta,” interposed my father, who, ready enough to condemn his age and his country himself, was Englishman enough to allow no other person to do so with impunity.