Then, as the carriage swept round the turn, he woke up from his long
reverie; waking Richard up also, from his long dream of mere seeing, to
human drama but dimly apprehended close there at his side.

"Oh, well, well!" the man exclaimed, throwing back his head in sharp
impatience, as a horse will against the restraint of the bearing-rein.
He raised his eyebrows, while his lips set in a smile the reverse of
gay. Then he looked down at Richard again, an unwonted softness in his
expression.

"Been happy?" he said. "Enjoyed your drive? That's right. You
understand the art of being really good company, Dick."

"What's that?"

"Allowing other people to be just as bad company as they like."

"I--I don't see how you could be bad company," Dickie said, flushing at
the audacity of his little compliment.

"Don't you, dear old chap? Well, that's very nice of you. All the same,
I find, at times, I can be precious bad company to myself."

"Oh! but I don't see how," the boy argued, his enthusiasm protesting
against all possibility of default in the object of it. Richard wanted
to keep his hands down,--unconsciousness, if only assumed, told for
personal dignity--but in the agitation of protest, spite of himself, he
laid hold of the top edge of that same chastening strap. "It must be so
awfully jolly to be like you--able to do everything and go everywhere.
There must be such a lot to think about."

The softness was still upon Ormiston's face. "Such a lot?" he said. "A
jolly lot too much, believe me, very often, Dick."

He looked away up the copse-bordered road, over the ears of the
trotting horses.

"You've read the story of Blue Beard and that unpleasant locked-up room
of his, where the poor little wives hung all of a row? Well, I'm sorry
to say, Dick, most men when they come to my age have a room of that
sort. It's an inhospitable place. One doesn't invite one's friends to
dine and smoke there. At least no gentleman does. I've met one or two
persons who set the door open and rather gloried in inviting
inspection--but they were blackguards and cads. They don't count. Still
each of us is obliged to go in there sometimes himself. I tell you it's
anything but lively. I've been in there just now."

The dappled cloud creeping upward from the southern horizon veiled the
sun, the light of which grew pale and thin. The scent of the larch
wood, on the right, hung in the air. Richard's eyes were wide with
inquiry. His mind suffere