“Oh! I don’t know,” returned George. “They enjoy life on the whole, I believe. It ain’t such a very bad sort of a world as some people would have it. Nature is cruel enough in some of her arrangements, it can’t be denied. She don’t scruple to carry out her plans. It is nothing to her that for the life of one great monster of a high-priest, millions upon millions of submissive little fishes should be sacrificed; and then if anybody come within the teeth of her machinery, don’t she mangle him finely--with her fevers and her agues and her convulsions and consumptions and what not? But still, barring her own necessities, and the consequences of man’s ignorance and foolhardiness, she is on the whole rather a good-natured old woman, and scatters a deal of tolerably fair enjoyment around her.” “One WOULD think the birds must be happy in summer, at least, to hear them sing,” corroborated Helen. “Yes, or to see them stripping a hawthorn bush in winter--always provided the cat or the hawk don’t get hold of them. With that nature does not trouble herself. Well, it’s soon over--with all of us, and that’s a comfort. If men would only get rid of their cats and hawks,--such as the fancy for instance, that all their suffering comes of the will of a malignant power! That is the kind of thing that makes the misery of the world!” “I don’t quite see----” began Helen. “We were talking about the birds in winter,” interrupted George, careful not to swell too suddenly any of the air-bags with which he would float Helen’s belief. He knew wisely, and he knew how, to leave a hint to work while it was yet not half understood. By the time it was understood, it would have grown a little familiar: the supposed pup when it turned out a cub, would not be so terrible as if it had presented itself at once as leonate. And so they wandered across the park, talking easily. “They’ve got on a good way since I was here last,” said George, as they came in sight of the new house the new earl was building. “But they don’t seem much in a hurry with it either.” “Aunt says it is twenty years since the foundations were laid by the uncle of the present earl,” said Helen; “and then for some reason or other the thing was dropped.” “Was there no house on the place before?” “Oh! yes--not much of a house, though.” “And they pulled it down, I suppose.” “No; it stands there still.” “Where?” “Down in the hollow there--over those trees--about the worst place they could have built in. Surely you have seen it! Poldie and I used to run all over it.” “No, I never saw it. Was it empty then?” “Yes, or almost. I can remember some little attention paid to the garden, but none to the house. It is just falling slowly to pieces. Would you like to see it?” “That I should,” returned Bascombe, who was always ready for any new impression on his sensorium, and away they went to look at the old house of Glaston as it was called, after some greatly older and probably fortified place.