"I should have been a happier fellow, and worth something then, perhaps, if I had been somebody's tenth son, and had had to earn my bread quill-driving, or soap-boiling, or sawbones-ing. I think I see myself pounding away at a pestle and mortar in the surgery" (laughing). "I should have had a chance, then, of being liked for myself too, even if I did smell rather of pills and plaister; whereas now, if anybody looks pleasant at me, or says anything civil to me, I always think it is for love of Felton, not of me." "You should go about _incognito_, like the Lord of Burleigh." "He was but a landscape painter, you know. Do you know that once, not a very many years ago, I had a ridiculous notion in my head that one ought to try and do some little good in the world? Thanks to Sir Thomas's assistance and example, I have very nearly succeeded in getting rid of that chimera. If I am asked at the Last Day how I have spent my life, I can say, I have shot a few bears in Norway, and a good many turkeys and grebe in Albania; I have killed several salmon in Connemara: I have made a fool of myself once, and a beast of myself many times." "How did you make a fool of yourself?" pricking up her ears. "Oh! never mind; it is a stupid story without any point, and I have not quite come to the pitch of dotage of telling senile anecdotes about myself. Here, let us turn in at this gate, and take a cut across the park: it is cooler, and we can have a nice gallop under the trees, without coming in for the full legacy of Sir Thomas's and Conny's dust, as we are doing now." "But--but--is not it rather _dangerous?_" objects Esther, demurring. "Don't they sometimes put their feet into rabbit-holes, and tumble down and break their legs?" "Frequently, I may almost say _invariably_," answers St. John, laughing, and opening the gate with the handle of his whip. The soft, springy, green turf is certainly pleasanter than the hard, whity-brown turnpike road, and so the horses think as they break into a brisk canter. The quick air freshens the riders' faces--comes to them like comfortable words from Heaven to a soul in Purgatory--as they dash along under the trees, stooping their heads every now and then to avoid coming into contact with the great, low-spreading boughs. Laughing, flushed, half-fright, half-enjoyment: "She looked so lovely as she swayed The rein with dainty finger-tips; A man had given all other bliss, And all his worldly worth for this-- To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips." "Delicious! I'm not a bit afraid now; I bid defiance to the rabbit-holes," she cries, with little breathless pauses between the words.