Austin felt immensely flattered at such confidences being vouchsafed to him by the eminent exponent of Lord Byron, and said he was certain that the theatre would be crammed.  Mr Buskin shrugged his shoulders, and replied he was sure he hoped so.

“And now,” he added, “I think I’ll be walking back.  And look you here, young gentleman.  We’ve had a pleasant meeting, and I’d like to see you again.  Just take this card”—­scribbling a few words on it in pencil—­“and the night you favour us with your presence in the house, come round and see me in me dressing-room between the acts.  You’ve only to show that, and they’ll let you in at once.  I’d like your impressions of the thing while it’s going on.”

Austin accepted the card with becoming courtesy, and offered his own in exchange.  Mr Buskin shook hands in a very cordial manner, and the next moment was making his way rapidly in the direction of the town.

“What a very singular gentleman,” thought Austin, when he was once more alone.  “I wonder whether all actors are like that.  Scarcely, I suppose.  Well, now I’m to have a glimpse of another new world.  Mr St Aubyn has shown me one or two; what will Mr Buskin’s be like?  It’s all extremely interesting, anyhow.”

Then he stumped along to the river side, giving a majestic twirl to his wooden leg with every step he took through the long grass.  How he would have loved a bathe!  The pool where he had so enjoyed himself with Lubin was not far off—­the pool of Daphnis, as he had christened it; but he hesitated to venture in alone.  So he lay down on the bank and watched the yellow water-lilies from afar, dreaming of many things.  How clever Lubin was, and what a lot he knew!  Why geese should dance for rain he couldn’t even imagine; but the rain had actually come, and it was all a most suggestive mystery.  How many other curious connections there must be among natural occurrences that nobody ever dreamt of!  It was in the country one learnt about such things; in the fields and woods, and by the side of rivers.  Nature was the great school, after all.  History and geography were all very well in their way, but what food for the soul was there in knowing whether Norway was an island or a peninsula, or on what date some silly king had had his crown put on?  What did it matter, after all?  Those were the facts he despised; facts that had no significance for him whatever, that left him exactly as they found him first.  The sky and the birds and the flowers taught him lessons that were worth more than all the histories and geographies that were ever written.  The schoolroom was a desert, arid and unsatisfying; whereas the garden, the enclosed space which held stained cups of beauty and purple gold-eyed bells, that was a jewelled sanctuary.  Lubin was nearer the heart of things than Freeman and Macaulay, though they would have disdained him as a clod.  Virgil and Theocritus were greater philosophers than either Comte or Hegel.  Daphnis and Corydon represented the finest flower, the purest type of human evolution, and Herbert Spencer was nothing better than a particularly silly old man.