that's about the average. Count on it, you may generally
reckon what to expect. When you don't have the excess for a year or two,
you are drenched the year following.' He knew every bird by its flight
and its pipe, habits, tricks, hints of sagacity homely with the original
human; and his remarks on the sensitive life of trees and herbs were
a spell to his thirsty hearers. Something of astronomy he knew; but in
relation to that science, he sank his voice, touchingly to Diana, who
felt drawn to kinship with him when he had a pupil's tone. An allusion
by Arthur to the poetical work of Aratus, led to a memorably pleasant
evening's discourse upon the long reading of the stars by these
our mortal eyes. Altogether the mind of the practical man became
distinguishable to them as that of a plain brother of the poetic. Diana
said of him to Arthur: 'He does not supply me with similes; he points to
the source of them.' Arthur, with envy of the man of positive knowledge,
disguised an unstrung heart in agreeing.

Redworth alluded passingly to the condition of public affairs. Neither
of them replied. Diana was wondering how one who perused the eternal
of nature should lend a thought to the dusty temporary of the world.
Subsequently she reflected that she was asking him to confine his great
male appetite to the nibble of bread which nourished her immediate sense
of life. Her reflections were thin as mist, coming and going like the
mist, with no direction upon her brain, if they sprang from it. When he
had gone, welcome though Arthur had seen him to be, she rebounded to a
broader and cheerfuller liveliness. Arthur was flattered by an idea of
her casting off incubus--a most worthy gentleman, and a not perfectly
sympathetic associate. Her eyes had their lost light in them, her
step was brisker; she challenged him to former games of conversation,
excursions in blank verse here and there, as the mood dictated. They
amused themselves, and Emma too. She revelled in seeing Tony's younger
face and hearing some of her natural outbursts. That Dacier never could
have been the man for her, would have compressed and subjected her, and
inflicted a further taste of bondage in marriage, she was assured. She
hoped for the day when Tony would know it, and haply that another, whom
she little comprehended, was her rightful mate.

March continued South-westerly and grew rainier, as Redworth had
foretold, bidding them look for gales and storm, and then the c