“I am sorry if I have bored you with my talk, but I thought you were interested in science.  Does this suit you better?

                        Many a little hand
     Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks,
     Many a light foot shone like a jewel set
     In the dark crag; and then we turn’d, we wound
     About the cliffs, the copses, out and in,
     Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names
     Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff,
     Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the sun
     Grew broader towards his death and fell, and all
     The rosy heights came out above the lawns.”

“That’s better, avic.  Tennyson’s got the shale there, I see.  But rag and trap and tuff is the word, and tough the whole business is.  Just look at that living blue bell, there, it’s worth all the stony names of rock and fossil.

     Let the proud Indian boast of his jessamine bowers,
     His garlands of roses and moss-covered dells,
     While humbly I sing of those sweet little flowers,
     The blue bells of Scotland, the Scottish blue bells. 
       We’ll shout in the chorus forever and ever,
       The blue bells of Scotland, the Scottish blue bells.”

“You are a nice botanist, Mr. Coristine, to confound that campanula with the Scottish blue-bell, which is a scilla, or wild hyacinth.”

“Poetic license, my dear friend, poetic license!  Hear this now:—­

     Let the Blue Mountains boast of their shale that’s bituminous,
     Full of trilobites, graptolites and all the rest,
     It may not be so learned, or ancient, or luminous,
     But the little campanula’s what I love best. 
       So we’ll shout in the chorus forever and ever,
       The little campanula’s worth all the rest.

Whew!  What do you think of that for an impromptu song, Wilks?”

“I think that you are turning your back upon your own principle that there is no best, or no one best, and that everything is best in its place.”

“Barring old Nick and the mosquitoes, Wilks, come now?”

“Well, an exception may be made in their favour, but what says the poet:—­

     O yet we trust that somehow good
     Will be the final goal of ill.

Come, along, though, for we have much to see before sunset.”

“You don’t think that good is going to come out of the devil and mosquitoes?”

“Yes I do; not to themselves, perhaps, but to humanity.”

“I saw a book once with the title “Why Doesn’t God Kill the Devil?” and sympathized with it.  Why doesn’t He?”

“Because man wants the devil.  As soon as the world ceases to want him, so soon is his occupation gone.”

“Wilks, my dear, that’s an awful responsibility lying on us men, and I fear what you say is too true.  So here’s for the shale works.”