while the remainder of the company crowded
the benches of a cab; the horse was urged (as horses have to be) by an
appeal to the pocket of the driver; the train caught by the inside of
a minute; and in less than an hour and a half we were breathing deep
of the sweet air of the forest and stretching our legs up the hill from
Fontainebleau octroi, bound for Barbizon. That the leading members of
our party covered the distance in fifty-one minutes and a half is (I
believe) one of the historic landmarks of the colony; but you will
scarce be surprised to learn that I was somewhat in the rear. Myner,
a comparatively philosophic Briton, kept me company in my deliberate
advance; the glory of the sun's going down, the fall of the long
shadows, the inimitable scent and the inspiration of the woods, attuned
me more and more to walk in a silence which progressively infected my
companion; and I remember that, when at last he spoke, I was startled
from a deep abstraction.

"Your father seems to be a pretty good kind of a father," said he. "Why
don't he come to see you?" I was ready with some dozen of reasons, and
had more in stock; but Myner, with that shrewdness which made him feared
and admired, suddenly fixed me with his eye-glass and asked, "Ever press
him?"

The blood came in my face. No; I had never pressed him; I had never even
encouraged him to come. I was proud of him; proud of his handsome looks,
of his kind, gentle ways, of that bright face he could show when others
were happy; proud, too (meanly proud, if you like) of his great wealth
and startling liberalities. And yet he would have been in the way of my
Paris life, of much of which he would have disapproved. I had feared to
expose to criticism his innocent remarks on art; I had told myself, I
had even partly believed, he did not want to come; I had been (and still
am) convinced that he was sure to be unhappy out of Muskegon; in short,
I had a thousand reasons, good and bad, not all of which could alter one
iota of the fact that I knew he only waited for my invitation.

"Thank you, Myner," said I; "you're a much better fellow than ever I
supposed. I'll write to-night."

"O, you're a pretty decent sort yourself," returned Myner, with more
than his usual flippancy of manner, but (as I was gratefully aware) not
a trace of his occasional irony of meaning.

Well, these were brave days, on which I could dwell forever. Brave,
too, were those that followed, when Pinkerton and