In which chapter the history quietly moves on to the next.
Thus nearly a week had gone, and Lionel began to feel perplexed as to the duration of his visit. Should he be the first to suggest departure? Mr. Darrell rescued him from that embarrassment. On the seventh day, Lionel met his host in a lane near the house, returning from his habitual ride. The boy walked home by the side of the horseman, patting the steed, admiring its shape, and praising the beauty of another saddle-horse, smaller and slighter, which he had seen in the paddock exercised by a groom. “Do you ever ride that chestnut? I think it even handsomer than this.”
“Half our preferences are due to the vanity they flatter. Few can ride this horse; any one, perhaps, that.”
“There speaks the Dare-all!” said Lionel, laughing. The host did not look displeased.
“Where no difficulty, there no pleasure,” said he in his curt laconic diction. “I was in Spain two years ago. I had not an English horse there, so I bought that Andalusian jennet. What has served him at need, no preux chevalier would leave to the chance of ill-usage. So the jennet came with me to England. You have not been much accustomed to ride, I suppose?”
“Not much; but my dear mother thought I ought to learn. She pinched for a whole year to have me taught at a riding-school during one school vacation.”
“Your mother’s relations are, I believe, well off. Do they suffer her to pinch?”
“I do not know that she has relations living; she never speaks of them.”
“Indeed!” This was the first question on home matters that Darrell had ever directly addressed to Lionel. He there dropped the subject, and said, after a short pause, “I was not aware that you are a horseman, or I would have asked you to accompany me; will you do so to-morrow, and mount the jennet?”
“Oh, thank you; I should like it so much.”
Darrell turned abruptly away from the bright, grateful eyes. “I am only sorry,” he added, looking aside, “that our excursions can be but few. On Friday next I shall submit to you a proposition; if you accept it, we shall part on Saturday,—liking each other, I hope: speaking for myself, the experiment has not failed; and on yours?”
“On mine!—oh, Mr. Darrell, if I dared but tell you what recollections of yourself the experiment will bequeath to me!”
“Do not tell me, if they imply a compliment,” answered Darrell, with the low silvery laugh which so melodiously expressed indifference and repelled affection. He entered the stable-yard, dismounted; and on returning to Lionel, the sound of the flute stole forth, as if from the eaves of the gabled roof. “Could the pipe of Horace’s Faunus be sweeter than that flute?” said Darrell,
“‘Utcunque dulci, Tyndare, fistula,
Valles,’ etc.
What a lovely ode that is! What knowledge of town life! what susceptibility to the rural! Of all the Latins, Horace is the only one with whom I could wish to have spent a week. But no! I could not have discussed the brief span of human life with locks steeped in Malobathran balm and wreathed with that silly myrtle. Horace and I would have quarrelled over the first heady bowl of Massie. We never can quarrel now! Blessed subject and poet-laureate of Queen Proserpine, and, I dare swear, the most gentlemanlike poet she ever received at court; henceforth his task is to uncoil the asps from the brows of Alecto, and arrest the ambitious Orion from the chase after visionary lions.”
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