Barney Bill listened
comprehendingly. Then, smoking a well-blackened clay, he began to utter
maledictions on the suffocating life in towns and to extol his own
manner of living. Having an appreciative audience, he grew eloquent
over his lonely wanderings the length and breadth of the land; over the
joy of country things, the sweetness of the fields, the wayside
flowers, the vaulted highways in the leafy summer, the quiet, sleepy
towns, the fragrant villages, the peace and cleanness of the open air.

The night had fallen, and in the cleared sky the stars shone bright.
Paul, his head against the lintel of the van door, looked up at them,
enthralled by the talk of Barney Bill. The vagabond merchant had the
slight drawling inflection of the Home Counties, which gave a soothing
effect to a naturally soft voice. To Paul it was the pipes of Pan.

"It mightn't suit everybody," said Barney Bill philosophically. "Some
folks prefer gas to laylock. I don't say that they're wrong. But I
likes laylock."

"What's laylock?" asked Paul.

His friend explained. No lilac bloomed in the blighted Springs of
Bludston.

"Does it smell sweet?"

"Yuss. So does the may and the syringa and the new-mown hay and the
seaweed. Never smelt any of 'em?"

"No," sighed Paul, sensuously conscious of new and vague horizons. "I
once smelled summat sweet," he said dreamily. "It wur a lady."

"D'ye mean a woman?"

"No. A lady. Like what yo' read of."

"I've heard as they do smell good; like violets--some on 'em," the
philosopher remarked.

Drawn magnetically to this spiritual brother, Paul said almost without
volition, "She said I were the son of a prince."

"Son of a WOT?" cried Barney Bill, sitting up with a jerk that shook a
volume or two onto the ground.

Paul repeated the startling word.

"Lor' lumme!" exclaimed the other, "don't yer know who yer father was?"

Paul told of his disastrous attempts to pierce the mystery of his birth.

"A frying-pan? Did she now? That's a mother for yer."

Paul disowned her. He disowned her with reprehensible emphasis.

Barney Bill pulled reflectively at his pipe. Then he laid a bony hand
on the boy's shoulder. "Who do you think yer mother was?" he asked
gravely. "A princess?"

"Ay, why not?" said Paul.

"Why not?" echoed Barney Bill. "Why not? You're a blooming lucky kid. I
wish I was a missin' heir. I know what I'd do."

"What?" asked Paul, the ingenuous.

"I'd find my 'igh-born parents."

"