Strong pulling is an excellent medical remedy for certain classes of fever.  Richard took to it instinctively.  The clear fresh water, burnished with sunrise, sparkled against his arrowy prow; the soft deep shadows curled smiling away from his gliding keel.  Overhead solitary morning unfolded itself, from blossom to bud, from bud to flower; still, delicious changes of light and colour, to whose influences he was heedless as he shot under willows and aspens, and across sheets of river-reaches, pure mirrors to the upper glory, himself the sole tenant of the stream.  Somewhere at the founts of the world lay the land he was rowing toward; something of its shadowed lights might be discerned here and there.  It was not a dream, now he knew.  There was a secret abroad.  The woods were full of it; the waters rolled with it, and the winds.  Oh, why could not one in these days do some high knightly deed which should draw down ladies’ eyes from their heaven, as in the days of Arthur!  To such a meaning breathed the unconscious sighs of the youth, when he had pulled through his first feverish energy.

He was off Bursley, and had lapsed a little into that musing quietude which follows strenuous exercise, when he heard a hail and his own name called.  It was no lady, no fairy, but young Ralph Morton, an irruption of miserable masculine prose.  Heartily wishing him abed with the rest of mankind, Richard rowed in and jumped ashore.  Ralph immediately seized his arm, saying that he desired earnestly to have a talk with him, and dragged the Magnetic Youth from his water-dreams, up and down the wet mown grass.  That he had to say seemed to be difficult of utterance, and Richard, though he barely listened, soon had enough of his old rival’s gladness at seeing him, and exhibited signs of impatience; whereat Ralph, as one who branches into matter somewhat foreign to his mind, but of great human interest and importance, put the question to him: 

“I say, what woman’s name do you like best?”

“I don’t know any,” quoth Richard, indifferently.  “Why are you out so early?”

In answer to this, Ralph suggested that the name of Mary might be considered a pretty name.

Richard agreed that it might be; the housekeeper at Raynham, half the women cooks, and all the housemaids enjoyed that name; the name of Mary was equivalent for women at home.

“Yes, I know,” said Ralph.  “We have lots of Marys.  It’s so common.  Oh!  I don’t like Mary best.  What do you think?”

Richard thought it just like another.

“Do you know,” Ralph continued, throwing off the mask and plunging into the subject, “I’d do anything on earth for some names—­one or two.  It’s not Mary, nor Lucy.  Clarinda’s pretty, but it’s like a novel.  Claribel, I like.  Names beginning with ‘Cl’ I prefer.  The ‘Cl’s’ are always gentle and lovely girls you would die for!  Don’t you think so?”