“You cannot surely have tamed _all_ the birds in your grounds!” I said. “If I have,” he answered, “it has been by permitting them to be themselves.” “You mean it is the nature of birds to be friendly with man?” “I do. Through long ages men have been their enemies, and so have alienated them--they too not being themselves.” “You mean that unfriendliness is not natural to men?” “It cannot be human to be cruel!” “How is it, then, that so many boys are careless what suffering they inflict?” “Because they have in them the blood of men who loved cruelty, and never repented of it.” “But how do you account for those men loving cruelty--for their being what you say is contrary to their nature?” “Ah, if I could account for that, I should be at the secret of most things! All I meant to half-explain was, how it came that so many who have no wish to inflict suffering, yet are careless of inflicting it.” I saw that we must know each other better before he would quite open his mind to me. I saw that though, hospitable of heart, he threw his best rooms open to all, there were others in his house into which he did not invite every acquaintance. The avenue led to a wide gravelled space before a plain, low, long building in whitish stone, with pillared portico. In the middle of the space was a fountain, and close to it a few chairs. Mr. Skymer begged me to be seated. Memnon walked up to the fountain, and lay down, that I might get off his back as easily as I had got on it. Once down, he turned on his side, and lay still. “The air is so mild,” said my host, “I fancy you will prefer this to the house.” “Mild!” I rejoined; “I should call it hot!” “I have been so much in real heat!” he returned. “Notwithstanding my love of turf, I keep this much in gravel for the sake of the desert.” I took the seat he offered me, wondering whether Memnon was comfortable where he lay; and, absorbed in the horse, did not see my host go to the other side of the basin. Suddenly we were “clothed upon” with a house which, though it came indeed from the earth, might well have come direct from heaven: a great uprush of water spread above us a tent-like dome, through which the sun came with a cool, broken, almost frosty glitter. We seemed in the heart of a huge soap-bubble. I exclaimed with delight. “I thought you would enjoy my sun-shade!” said Mr. Skymer. “Memnon and I often come here of a hot morning, when nobody wants us. Don’t we, Memnon?” The horse lifted his nose a little, and made a low soft noise, a chord of mingled obedience and delight--a moan of pleasure mixed with a half-born whinny. We had not been seated many moments, and had scarcely pushed off the shore of silence into a new sea of talk, when we were interrupted by the invasion of half a dozen dogs. They were of all sorts down to no sort. Mr. Skymer called one of them Tadpole--I suppose because he had the hugest tail, while his legs were not visible without being looked for.