st sat down at once on the sofa, holding his lame
knee between his hands, and Mrs. Narracombe gazed at him. He was the
only son of a late professor of chemistry, but people found a certain
lordliness in one who was often so sublimely unconscious of them.

"Is there a stream where we could bathe?"

"There's the strame at the bottom of the orchard, but sittin' down
you'll not be covered!"

"How deep?"

"Well, 'tis about a foot and a half, maybe."

"Oh! That'll do fine. Which way?"

"Down the lane, through the second gate on the right, an' the pool's by
the big apple tree that stands by itself. There's trout there, if you
can tickle them."

"They're more likely to tickle us!"

Mrs. Narracombe smiled. "There'll be the tea ready when you come back."

The pool, formed by the damming of a rock, had a sandy bottom; and the
big apple tree, lowest in the orchard, grew so close that its boughs
almost overhung the water; it was in leaf, and all but in flower-its
crimson buds just bursting. There was not room for more than one at a
time in that narrow bath, and Ashurst waited his turn, rubbing his
knee and gazing at the wild meadow, all rocks and thorn trees and feld
flowers, with a grove of beeches beyond, raised up on a flat mound.
Every bough was swinging in the wind, every spring bird calling, and a
slanting sunlight dappled the grass. He thought of Theocritus, and the
river Cherwell, of the moon, and the maiden with the dewy eyes; of so
many things that he seemed to think of nothing; and he felt absurdly
happy.

2

During a late and sumptuous tea with eggs to it, cream and jam, and
thin, fresh cakes touched with saffron, Garton descanted on the Celts.
It was about the period of the Celtic awakening, and the discovery that
there was Celtic blood about this family had excited one who believed
that he was a Celt himself. Sprawling on a horse hair chair, with a
hand-made cigarette dribbling from the corner of his curly lips, he had
been plunging his cold pin-points of eyes into Ashurst's and praising
the refinement of the Welsh. To come out of Wales into England was like
the change from china to earthenware! Frank, as a d---d Englishman, had
not of course perceived the exquisite refinement and emotional capacity
of that Welsh girl! And, delicately stirring in the dark mat of his
still wet hair, he explained how exactly she illustrated the writings of
the Welsh bard Morgan-ap-Something in the twelfth century.