------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER V “When the butcher’s boy tells you in confidence, and with an eye to a tip, that the grocer’s brother has a very fine piece of very old sculpture which he is prepared to part with for a moderate consideration, what do you suppose he means?” Walking slowly up-hill among the olive trees, Mr. Cardan meditatively put the question. “I suppose he means what he says,” said Miss Thriplow. “No doubt,” said Mr. Cardan, halting for a moment to wipe his face, which shone, even though the sun came only slantingly through the thin foliage of the olive trees, with an excess of heat. Miss Thriplow in the green uniform of the musical comedy schoolgirl looked wonderfully cool and neat beside her unbuttoned companion. “But the point is this: what exactly is it that he says? What is a butcher’s boy likely to mean when he says that a piece of sculpture is very beautiful and very old?” They resumed their climbing. Below them, through a gap in the trees, they could see the roofs and the slender tower of the Cybo Malaspina palace, and below these again the dolls’ village of Vezza, the map-like plain, the sea. “I should ask him, if you want to know.” Miss Thriplow spoke rather tartly; it was not to talk of butchers’ boys that she had accepted Mr. Cardan’s invitation to go for a walk with him. She wanted to hear Mr. Cardan’s views on life, literature and herself. He knew a thing or two, it seemed to her, about all these subjects. Too many things, and not exactly the right ones at that, about the last. Too many—it was precisely for that reason that Miss Thriplow liked to talk with him. Horrors always exercise a fascination. And now, after the prolonged silence, he was starting on butchers’ boys. “I have asked him,” said Mr. Cardan. “But do you suppose there’s anything intelligible to be got out of him? All I can gather is that the sculpture represents a man—not a whole man, part of a man, and that it’s made of marble. Beyond that I can discover nothing.” “Why do you want to discover?” asked Miss Thriplow. Mr. Cardan shook his head. “Alas,” he said, “for sordid reasons. You remember what the poet wrote? I have been in love, in debt and in drink This many and many a year; And these are three evils too great, one would think, For one poor mortal to bear. ’Twas love that first drove me to drinking, And drinking first drove me to debt, And though I have struggled and struggled and strove, I cannot get out of them yet. There’s nothing but money can cure me And ease me of all my pain; ’Twill pay all my debts and remove all my lets, And my mistress who cannot endure me Will turn to and love me again, Will turn to and love me again.