Leslie would meekly give in.  His leaning on Peter in this matter of what he wanted was touching.  In the matter of what he admired, where no questions of acquisition came in, he and his shopping-man agreed less.  Leslie here showed flashes of proper spirit.  He also read Ruskin in the train.  Peter had small allegiance there; he even, when irritated, called Ruskin a muddle-head.

“He’s a good man, isn’t he?” Leslie queried, puzzled.  “Surely he knows what he’s talking about?” and Peter had to admit that that was so.

“He tells me what to like,” the self-educator said simply.  “And I try to like it.  I don’t always succeed, but I try.  That’s right, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.”  Peter was puzzled.  “It seems to me rather a funny way of going about it.  When you’ve succeeded, are you much happier?  I mean, what sort of a liking is it?  Oh, but I don’t understand—­there aren’t two sorts really.  You either like a thing, or ... well.”

At times one needed a rest from Leslie.  But outside the province of art and the pleasures of the eye he was lovable, even likeable, having here a self-dependence and a personality that put pathos far off, and made him himself a rest.  And his generosity was limitless.  It was almost an oppression; only Peter, being neither proud nor self-conscious, was not easily oppressed.  He took what was lavished on him and did his best to deserve it.  But it was perhaps a little tiring.  Leslie was a thoroughly good sort—­a much better sort than most people knew—­but Italy was somehow not the fit setting for him.  Nothing could have made Peter dislike things pleasant to look at; but Leslie’s persevering, uncomprehending groping after their pleasantness made one feel desirous to dig a gulf between them and him.  It was rather ageing.  Peter missed Urquhart and Lucy; one felt much younger with them.  The thought of their clean, light, direct touch on life, that handled its goods without fumbling, and without the need of any intervening medium, was as refreshing as a breath of fresh air in a close room.

Rodney too was refreshing.  They came across him at Pietrasanta; he was walking across Tuscany by himself, and came to the station, looking very dusty and disreputable, to put the book he had finished into his bag that travelled by train and get out another.

“Come out of that,” he said to Peter, “and walk with me to Florence.  Trains for bags; roads for men.  You can meet your patron in Florence.  Come along.”

And Peter, after a brief consultation with the accommodating Leslie, did come along.  It was certainly more than amusing.  The road in Tuscany is much better than the railway.  And Rodney was an interesting and rather attractive person.  Since he left Cambridge he had been pursuing abstruse chemical research in a laboratory he had in a Westminster slum.  Peter never saw him in London, because the Ignorant Rich do not live in slums, and because Rodney was not fond of the more respectable quarters of the city.