“I am not a native but a stranger. Your tongue is by me acquired. There are even tones and inflexions of voice in you I cannot attain because my vocal organs got set in another world. A man like myself taken up and carried into a different sphere by another hand is inevitably so self-conscious that his self-consciousness is a perpetual torment to him. According to the apocryphal tale, an angel caught Habakkuk by the hair and carried him with a mess of pottage in his hands through the air, and deposited him in Daniel’s den of lions. Your father has been my angel, who has taken me up and transported me, and now I am in a den of lordly beasts who stalk round me and wonder how I came among them, and turn up their noses at the bowl I carry in my shaking hands.” “And you want to escape from us lions?” “Pardon me—I am equally ill at ease elsewhere, I have associated with lions till I can only growl.” “And lash yourself raw,” laughed Arminell; “you know a lion has a nail at the end of his tail, wherewith he goads himself.” “I can torture myself—that is true,” said Saltren, in a disquieted tone. “My lord will give me a living and provide for me if I will enter the Church, but that is precisely an atmosphere I do not relish—and what am I to do? I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed.” “Mr. Saltren, you are not at ease in the lions’ den, but suppose you were to crawl out and get into the fields?” “I should lose my way, having been carried by the angel out of my own country. You see the wretchedness of my position, I am uncomfortable wherever I am. In my present situation I imagine slights. Anecdotes told at table make me wince, jokes fret me. Conversation on certain subjects halts because I am present. Yet I cannot revert to my native condition; that would be deterioration, now I have acquired polish, and have progressed.” “I should not have supposed, Mr. Saltren, that you were so full of trouble.” “No—looking on a rose-pip, all smoothness, you do not reckon on its being full of choke within. And now—Miss Inglett, you see at once an instance of my lack of tact and knowledge. I am in doubt whether I have done well to pour out my pottle of troubles in your ear, or whether I have behaved like a booby.” “I invited you to it.”