Even the blackened lands between the towns had their charm for Paul, in that he had a gleeful sense of being excluded from the wrath of God, which fell continuously upon them and the inhabitants thereof.  And here and there a belt of leafy country gave promise, or confirmed Barney Bill’s promise, of the Paradise that would come.  Besides, what mattered the perpetuations of Bludston brickfields when the Land of Beulah shimmered ahead in the blue distance, when “Martin Chuzzlewit” lay open on his knees, when the smell of the bit of steak sizzling on the cooking stove stung his young blood?  And now they were in Warwickshire, county of verdant undulations and deep woods and embowered villages.  Every promise that Barney Bill had made to him of beauty was in process of fulfilment.  There were no more blighted towns, no more factories, no more chimneys belching forth smoke.  This was the Earth, the real broad-bosomed Mother Earth.  What he had left was the Hell upon Earth.  What he was going to might be Paradise, but Paul’s imagination rightly boggled at the conception of a Paradise more perfect.  And, as Paul’s prescient wit had conjectured, he was learning many things; the names of trees and wild flowers, the cries of birds, the habits of wayside beasts; what was good for a horse to eat and what was bad; which was the Waggon, and Orion’s Belt and the Bunch of Keys in the heavens; how to fry bacon and sew up rents in his clothing; how to deal with his fellow-man, or, rather, with his fellow-woman, in a persuasive manner; how to snare a rabbit or a pheasant and convert it into food, and how, at the same time, to evade the terrors of the law; the differences between wheat and oats and barley; the main lines of cleavage between political parties, hitherto a puzzle to Paul, for Barney Bill was a politician (on the Conservative side) and read his newspaper and argued craftily in taverns; and the styles and titles of great landowners by whose estates they passed; and how to avoid the nets that were perpetually spread by a predatory sex before the feet of the incautious male.  On the last point Barney Bill was eloquent; but Paul, with delicious memories sanctifying his young soul, turned a deaf ear to his misogyny.  Barney Bill was very old and crooked and dried up; what beautiful lady would waste her blandishments on him?  Even the low-born lasses with whom they at times consorted had scarce an eye for Barney Bill.  The grapes were sour.  Paul smiled indulgently on the little foible of his friend.

They jogged along the highroad on this blazing and dusty day.  Their bower of wicker chairs crackled in the heat.  It was too hot for sustained conversation.  Once Barney Bill said:  “If Bob"-Bob was the old horse’s unimaginative name—­“if Bob doesn’t have a drink soon his darned old hide’ll crack.”

Ten minutes later:  “Nothing under a quart’ll wash down this dust.”

“Have a drink of water,” suggested Paul, who had already adopted this care for drouth, with satisfactory results.