“You are very clever to do that the first time,” remarked the schoolmaster, wishing to be polite to the girl, who looked quite pleasant and comely, in spite of her bare feet and arms.

“There ain’t no cleverness about it,” she replied, with a harsh nasal accent; “any fool most could do as much.”  Wilkinson carried the tin pail to the shanty disillusioned, took his drink out of a cup that seemed clean enough, joined his friend in thanking mother and daughter for their hospitality, and retired to the road.

“Do you find your respect for the fair sex rising?” he asked Coristine, cynically.

“The mother’s an awful old harridan—­”

“Yes, and when the daughter is her age she will be a harridan, too, the gentle rustic beauties have gone out of date, like the old poets.  The schoolmaster is much needed here to teach young women not to compare gentlemen even if they are pedestrianizing, to ‘any fool most.’”

“Oh, Wilks, is that where you’re hit?  I thought you and she were long enough over that water business for a case of Jacob and Rachel at the well, ha, ha!”

“Come, cease this folly, Coristine, and let us get along.”

Sentiment had received a rude shock.  It met with a second when Coristine remarked “I’m hungry.”  Still, he kept on for another mile or so, when the travellers sighted a little brook of clear water rippling over stones.  A short distance to the left of the road it was shaded by trees and tall bushes, not too close together, but presenting, here and there, little patches of grass and the leaves of woodland flowers.  Selecting one of these patches, they unstrapped their knapsacks, and extracted from them a sufficiency of biscuits and cheese for luncheon.  Then one of the packs, as they had irreverently been called, was turned over to make a table.  The biscuits and cheese were moistened with small portions from the contents of the flasks, diluted with the cool water of the brook.  The meal ended, Wilkinson took to nibbling ginger snaps and reading Wordsworth.  The day was hot, so that a passing cloud which came over the face of the sun was grateful, but it was grateful to beast as well as to man, for immediately a swarm of mosquitoes and other flies came forth to do battle with the reposing pedestrians.  Coristine’s pipe kept them from attacking him in force, but Wilkinson got all the more in consequence.  He struck savagely at them with Wordsworth, anathematized them in choice but not profane language, and, at last, rose to his feet, switching his pocket handkerchief fiercely about his head.  Coristine picked up the deserted Wordsworth, and laughed till the smoke of his pipe choked him and the tears came into his eyes.

“I see no cause for levity in the sufferings of a fellow creature,” said the schoolmaster, curtly.

“Wilks, my darling boy, it’s not you I’m laughing at; it’s that old omadhaun of a Wordsworth.  Hark to this, now:—­