Take off your coat to it, Philip. Well, then, said Hewson, resuming; Laugh if you please at my novel economy; listen to this, though; As for myself, and apart from economy wholly, believe me, Never I properly felt the relation between men and women, Though to the dancing-master I went perforce, for a quarter, Where, in dismal quadrille, were good-looking girls in abundance, Though, too, school-girl cousins were mine—a bevy of beauties— Never (of course you will laugh, but of course all the same I shall say it), Never, believe me, I knew of the feelings between men and women, Till in some village fields in holidays now getting stupid, One day sauntering ‘long and listless,’ as Tennyson has it, Long and listless strolling, ungainly in hobbadiboyhood, Chanced it my eye fell aside on a capless, bonnetless maiden, Bending with three-pronged fork in a garden uprooting potatoes. Was it the air? who can say? or herself, or the charm of the labour? But a new thing was in me; and longing delicious possessed me, Longing to take her and lift her, and put her away from her slaving. Was it embracing or aiding was most in my mind? hard question! But a new thing was in me; I, too, was a youth among maidens: Was it the air I who can say! but in part ’twas the charm of the labour. Still, though a new thing was in me, the poets revealed themselves to me, And in my dreams by Miranda, her Ferdinand, often I wandered, Though all the fuss about girls, the giggling and toying and coying, Were not so strange as before, so incomprehensible purely; Still, as before (and as now), balls, dances, and evening parties, Shooting with bows, going shopping together, and hearing them singing, Dangling beside them, and turning the leaves on the dreary piano, Offering unneeded arms, performing dull farces of escort, Seemed like a sort of unnatural up-in-the-air balloon-work (Or what to me is as hateful, a riding about in a carriage), Utter removal from work, mother earth, and the objects of living. Hungry and fainting for food, you ask me to join you in snapping— What but a pink-paper comfit, with motto romantic inside it? Wishing to stock me a garden, I’m sent to a table of nosegays; Better a crust of black bread than a mountain of paper confections, Better a daisy in earth than a dahlia cut and gathered, Better a cowslip with root than a prize carnation without it. That I allow, said Adam. But he, with the bit in his teeth, scarce Breathed a brief moment, and hurried exultingly on with his rider, Far over hillock, and runnel, and bramble, away in the champaign, Snorting defiance and force, the white foam flecking his flanks, the Rein hanging loose to his neck, and head projecting before him.