ought the other,
but wisely reserved that great truth for his wife. However, it was not
at all a bad job for England. And Scudamore had now seen four years of
active service, counting the former years of volunteering, and was more
than twenty-five years old.

None of these things exalted him at all in his own opinion, or, at
any rate, not very much. Because he had always regarded himself with
a proper amount of self-respect, as modest men are almost sure to do,
desiring less to know what the world thinks of them than to try to think
rightly of it for themselves. His opinion of it seemed to be that it was
very good just now, very kind, and fair, and gentle, and a thing for the
heart of man to enter into.

For Dolly Darling was close beside him, sitting on a very pretty bench,
made of twisted oak, and turned up at the back and both ends, so that
a gentleman could not get very far away from a lady without frightening
her. Not only in this way was the spot well adapted for tender feelings,
but itself truly ready to suggest them, with nature and the time of year
to help. There was no stream issuing here, to puzzle and perpetually
divert the human mind (whose origin clearly was spring-water poured into
the frame of the jelly-fish), neither was there any big rock, like an
obstinate barrier rising; but gentle slopes of daisied pasture led the
eye complacently, sleek cows sniffed the herbage here and there, and
brushed it with the underlip to fetch up the blades for supper-time, and
placable trees, forgetting all the rudeness of the winter winds, began
to disclose to the fond deceiving breeze, with many a glimpse to
attract a glance, all the cream of their summer intentions. And in full
enjoyment of all these doings, the poet of the whole stood singing--the
simple-minded thrush, proclaiming that the world was good and kind, but
himself perhaps the kindest, and his nest, beyond doubt, the best of it.

"How lovely everything is to-day!" Blyth Scudamore spoke slowly, and
gazing shyly at the loveliest thing of all, in his opinion--the face of
Dolly Darling. "No wonder that your brother is a poet!"

"But he never writes about this sort of thing," said Dolly, smiling
pleasantly. "His poems are all about liberty, and the rights of men,
and the wrongs of war. And if he ever mentions cows or sheep, it is
generally to say what a shame it is to kill them."

"But surely it is much worse to kill men. And who is to be blamed for
that, Mi