He’d have liked to have that too, of course.  You’d like to have everything!  But you can’t.  And it is only immature boys who whimper because you can’t have your cake and eat it too.  That was all there was to that.

What he had dug for was to find his deepest and most permanent desires, and when he had found them, he’d come home with a happy heart.

It even seemed to him that he had been happier and quieter than before.  Well, maybe Marise’s metaphor had something in it, for all it was so flowery and high-falutin.  Maybe she would say that what he had done was exactly what she’d described, to dig it under the ground and let it fertilize and enrich his life.

Oh Lord! how a figure of speech always wound you up in knots if you tried to use it to say anything definite!

He relighted his pipe, this time with a steady hand, and a cool eye; and turned to Trevelyan and Garibaldi again.  He’d take that other side of himself out in books, he guessed.

He had now arrived at the crucial moment of the battle, and lifted his head and his heart in anticipation of the way Garibaldi met that moment.  He read, “To experienced eyes the battle seemed lost.  Bixio said to Garibaldi, ‘General, I fear we ought to retreat.’  Garibaldi looked up as though a serpent had stung him. ‘Here we make Italy or die!’ he said.”

“That’s the talk!” cried Neale, to himself.  The brave words resounded in the air about him, and drowned out the voices from the next room.

CHAPTER XIII

ALONG THE EAGLE ROCK BROOK

July 1.

Paul was very much pleased that Mr. Welles agreed with him so perfectly about the hour and place for lunch.  But then Mr. Welles was awfully nice about agreeing.  He said, now, “Yes, I believe this would be the best place.  Here by the pool, on that big rock, as you say.  We’ll be drier there.  Yesterday’s rain has made everything in the woods pretty wet.  That’s a good idea of yours, to build our fire on the rock, with water all around.  The fire couldn’t possibly spread.”  Paul looked proudly at the rain-soaked trees and wet soggy leaves which his forethought had saved from destruction and strode across the brook in his rubber boots, with the first installment of dry pine branches.

“Aren’t you tired?” he said protectingly to his companion.  “Whyn’t you sit down over there and undo the lunch-basket?  I’ll make camp.  Father showed me how to make a campfire with only one match.”

“All right,” said Mr. Welles.  “I do feel a little leg-weary.  I’m not so used to these mountain scrambles as you are.”

“I’ll clean the fish, too,” said Paul; “maybe you don’t like to.  Elly can’t abide it.”  He did not say that he did not like it very well himself, having always to get over the sick feeling it gave him.

“I never did it in my life,” confessed Mr. Welles.  “You see I always lived in towns till now.”