“Ha! Dull, eh? Why, nephew, I make little doubt that thou hast employed thyself in some fashion that was not altogether--the devil fly away with my toe!--not altogether without amusement. Thy thoughts, now--what, when I was thy age I could ha’ mused by the day together on something pleasant. Ha! I mind me of a day that I passed under a beech tree--I was then in love--I cut her name and mine--they were enclosed in a heart, and through the thicker part of it I carved an arrow. Cupid, eh, nephew?--and--and----” “But I, sir,” says I, “have no maiden to think of, seeing that none thinks of me.” “Why,” says he, with an arch look in his eyes, “that’s but a poor reason, Dick, for God’s faith, there are many men think of maidens that never think of them! Is there--plague take it, nephew! sit thee down like a Christian rather than stand lolling there on one leg like a dancing Frenchman. Is there, I say, no little pastry-cook’s wench in all Oxford that thou hast not set eyes on since Easter, and thought softly of? Ha, Dick, I mind me----” But in the midst of his memories the pain in his toe seized him so violently that he screamed to me to fetch Barbara, who came leisurely from the housekeeper’s room, and bade me go forth and leave her with him, which I was not loth to do. And being heartily wearied and sick of the rain, and my poor uncle’s gout, and the house, which I had kept all day, I threw my cloak about me and lounged into the porch, and stood there, one shoulder against the wall, staring at the raindrops which pattered in the courtyard, and made a musical tinkle in every pool.