all my faculties; my eyes, it is true,
were rather dull from early study, but I could see tolerably well with
them and they were not bleared. I felt my arms and thighs and
teeth--they were strong and sound enough; so now was the time to
labour, to marry, eat strong flesh, and beget strong children--the
power of doing all this would pass away with youth, which was terribly
transitory. I bethought me that a time would come when my eyes would
be bleared and perhaps sightless; my arms and thighs strengthless and
sapless; when my teeth would shake in my jaws, even supposing they did
not drop out. No going a-wooing then, no labouring, no eating strong
flesh and begetting lusty children then; and I bethought me how, when
all this should be, I should bewail the days of my youth as misspent,
provided I had not in them founded for myself a home, and begotten
strong children to take care of me in the days when I could not take
care of myself; and thinking of these things I became sadder and
sadder, and stared vacantly upon the fire until my eyes closed in a
doze."

It is significant that upon his return from the dream that followed this
reverie, the would-be colonist blew upon the embers and filled and heated
the kettle, that he might be able to welcome Isopel with a cup of the
beverage that she loved. It was the newly awakened Benedick brushing his
hat in the morning; but unhappily his conversion was not so complete as
Benedick's. Love-making and Armenian do not go together, and in the
colloquy that ensued, Belle could not feel assured that the man who
proposed to conjugate the verb "to love" in Armenian, was master of his
intentions in plain English. It was even so. The man of tongues lacked
speech wherewith to make manifest his passion; the vocabulary of the word-
master was insufficient to convince the workhouse girl of one of the
plainest meanings a man can well have. From the banter of the man of
learning the queen of the dingle sought refuge in a precipitate flight.
Almost simultaneously the word-master, albeit with reluctance, decided
that it was high time to give over his "mocking and scoffing." When he
returned with this resolve to the dingle, Isopel Berners had quitted it,
never to return.

Yet ever and anon that splendid and pathetic figure will cross the sky
line of his mental vision--and of ours. "Then the image of Isopel
Berners came into my mind," and the