And sometimes on a summer's evening, when we talked and read aloud to
each other across a quaint oak table that had been the miser's, of
far-away lands and strange birds of gorgeous plumage, the school-master
sat silent in the arm-chair by the open lattice, resting his white head
against the mullion that the ivy was creeping up, and listened to the
blackbirds and thrushes as their songs dropped by odd notes into
silence, and gazed at the near fields and trees, and the little
homestead with its hayricks on the hill, when the grass was apple-green
in the gold mist of sunset: and went on gazing when that had faded into
fog, and the hedgerow elms were black against the sky, as if the eye
could not be filled with seeing, nor the ear with hearing!
CHAPTER VI.
"Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,
Turns his necessity to glorious gain."
WORDSWORTH.
"Jack," said Charlie, "listen!"
He was reading bits out of the numbers to me, whilst I was rigging a
miniature yacht to sail on the dam; and Mrs. Wood's husband was making a
plan of something at another table, and occasionally giving me advice
about my masts and sails.
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