is place there was nothing
said about three children."

This was unreasonable of Fuji. It is very rare to have everything
explained beforehand. When Adam and Eve were put into the Garden of
Eden, there was nothing said about the serpent.

However, Gissing did not believe in entreating a servant to stay. He
offered to give Fuji a raise, but the butler was still determined to
leave.

"My senses are very delicate," he said. "I really cannot stand
the--well, the aroma exhaled by those three children when they have had
a warm bath."

"What nonsense!" cried Gissing. "The smell of wet, healthy puppies?
Nothing is more agreeable. You are cold-blooded: I don't believe you are
fond of puppies. Think of their wobbly black noses. Consider how pink is
the little cleft between their toes and the main cushion of their feet.
Their ears are like silk. Inside their upper jaws are parallel black
ridges, most remarkable. I never realized before how beautifully and
carefully we are made. I am surprised that you should be so indifferent
to these things."

There was a moisture in Fuji's eyes, but he left at the end of the week.

CHAPTER THREE

A solitary little path ran across the fields not far from the house.
It lay deep among tall grasses and the withered brittle stalks of
last autumn's goldenrod, and here Gissing rambled in the green hush of
twilight, after the puppies were in bed. In less responsible days
he would have lain down on his back, with all four legs upward, and
cheerily shrugged and rolled to and fro, as the crisp ground-stubble was
very pleasing to the spine. But now he paced soberly, the smoke from his
pipe eddying just above the top of the grasses. He had much to meditate.

The dogwood tree by the house was now in flower. The blossoms, with
their four curved petals, seemed to spin like tiny white propellers
in the bright air. When he saw them fluttering Gissing had a happy
sensation of movement. The business of those tremulous petals seemed to
be thrusting his whole world forward and forward, through the viewless
ocean of space. He felt as though he were on a ship--as, indeed, we are.
He had never been down to the open sea, but he had imagined it. There,
he thought, there must be the satisfaction of a real horizon.

Horizons had been a great disappointment to him. In earlier days he had
often slipped out of the house not long after sunrise, and had marvelled
at the blue that lies upon the skyline. Here, about