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“But everything is . Isn’t that just why we’re here?”

“Just exactly,” Dane said; “only I’ve been living in the beguiled supposition that we’ve somehow or other a climate.”

“So have I, so I dare say has every one. Isn’t that the blest moral?–that we live in beguiled suppositions. They come so easily here, where nothing contradicts them.” The good Brother looked placidly forth–Dane could identify his phase.”A climate doesn’t consist in its never raining, does it?”

“No, I dare say not. But somehow the good I’ve got has been half the great easy absence of all that friction of which the question of weather mostly forms a part–has been indeed largely the great easy perpetual air-bath.”

“Ah yes–that’s not a delusion; but perhaps the sense comes a little from our breathing an emptier medium. There are fewer things IN it! Leave people alone, at all events, and the air’s what they take to. Into the closed and the stuffy they have to be driven. I’ve had too–I think we must all have–a fond sense of the south.”

“But imagine it,” said Dane, laughing, “in the beloved British islands and so near as we are to Bradford!”

His friend was ready enough to imagine.”To Bradford?” he asked, quite unperturbed.”How near?”

Dane’s gaiety grew.”Oh it doesn’t matter!”

His friend, quite unmystified, accepted it.”There are things to puzzle out–otherwise it would be dull. It seems to me one can puzzle them.”

“It’s because we’re so well disposed,” Dane said.

“Precisely–we find good in everything.”

“In everything,” Dane went on.”The conditions settle that–they determine us.”

They resumed their stroll, which evidently represented on the good Brother’s part infinite agreement.”Aren’t they probably in fact very simple?” he presently enquired.”Isn’t simplification the secret?”

“Yes, but applied with a tact!”

“There it is. The thing’s so perfect that it’s open to as many interpretations as any other great work–a poem of Goethe, a dialogue of Plato, a symphony of Beethoven.”

“It simply stands quiet, you mean,” said Dane, “and lets us call it names?”

“Yes, but all such loving ones. We’re ‘staying’ with some one–some delicious host or hostess who never shows.”

“It’s liberty-hall–absolutely,” Dane assented.

“Yes–or a convalescent home.”

To this, however, Dane demurred.”Ah that, it seems to me, scarcely puts it. You weren’t ill –were you? I’m very sure I really wasn’t. I was only, as the world goes, too ‘beastly well’!”

The good Brother wondered.”But if we couldn’t keep it up–?”

“We couldn’t keep it down –that was all the matter!”

“I see–I see.” The good Brother sighed contentedly; after which he brought out again with kindly humour: “It’s a sort of kindergarten!”

“The next thing you’ll be saying that we’re babes at the breast!”

“Of some great mild invisible mother who stretches away into space and whose lap’s the whole valley–?”

“And her bosom”–Dane completed the figure–“the noble eminence of our hill? That will do; anything will do that covers the essential fact.”

“And what do you call the essential fact?”

“Why that–as in old days on Swiss lakesides–we’re en pension .”

The good Brother took this gently up.”I remember–I remember: seven francs a day without wine! But alas it’s more than seven francs here.”

“Yes, it’s considerably more,” Dane had to confess.”Perhaps it isn’t particularly cheap.”

“Yet should you call it particularly dear?” his friend after a moment enquired.

George Dane had to think.”How do I know, after all? What practice has one ever had in estimating the inestimable? Particular cheapness certainly isn’t the note we feel struck all round; but don’t we fall naturally into the view that there must be a price to anything so awfully sane?”

The good Brother in his turn reflected.”We fall into the view that it must pay–that it does pay.”

“Oh yes; it does pay!” Dane eagerly echoed.”If it didn’t it wouldn’t last. It has got to last of course!” he declared.

“So that we can come b
ack?”

“Yes–think of knowing that we shall be able to!”

They pulled up again at this and, facing each other, thought of it, or at any rate pretended to; for what was really in their eyes was the dread of a loss of the clue.”Oh when we want it again we shall find it,” said the good Brother.”If the place really pays it will keep on.”