"
"It is, Oliver," replied the sweet old scholar. "Man can understand the
one in a dozen years, if he try, but the other not in a lifetime, strive
he as earnestly as he may."
This fragment of my dear friend's talk came back to me now as we walked
in silence side by side. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her sweet
face set in earnest thinking, her rich lips compressed, her speaking eyes
fixed resolutely ahead. Not having to trouble about finding the road, and
there being no sign of anyone, either enemy or neutral, stirring on the
countryside, I let her go on thinking, and set myself the pleasant but
impossible task of accounting to myself for her mood. I went over all we
had said and done together that day, and at last, after perhaps half an
hour of unbroken silence, fell back on what seemed the only possible
explanation. She was thinking of her father. But why that suspicion of
asperity on her face? Was this explanation correct?
The vicar was right. She suddenly slipped her hand round my arm, looking
at me with laughing lips and dancing eyes, and said, "Isn't it splendid to
be alive on a day like this?"
"Yes, indeed it is," I replied, "but from your looks and your long
silence, I should hardly have judged that you were thinking so.
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