Walton.
"Oh! beautiful! A regular flash of--the real thing, don't you know. An
epigram. Most fahscinating! Oh-h!"
Poor Tom's elephantine delight over anything like a simile was always
emphatic, no matter whether he saw the exact point or not, and I'm
afraid that brilliant folk would have thought him perilously like a
fool. Happily his companions were ladies and gentlemen who were too
simple to sneer, and they laughed kindly at all the big man's
floundering ecstasies.
Ferrier said, "When I have got what I want, I shall vary your programme
if you will permit me. Do you know, it struck me that those good souls
are very like a live lizard cased in the dry clay? He fits his mould,
but he doesn't see out of it. I should like to give the men a little
wider horizon."
"Isn't heaven wide enough?"
"But your men are always staring _up_ at heaven. Could you not give them
a chance of looking _round_ a bit?"
"What are you driving at?"
"Mr. Ferrier means that they do not employ all their faculties. They are
going cheerfully through a long cave because they see the sun at the
mouth; but they don't know anything about the earth on the top of the
cave."
This was a surprisingly long speech for Marion Dearsley.
"You take me exactly. Now, Fullerton, I'm going to stay the winter out
here."
"You're what?" interjected Blair.
"Yes, I'm going to see the winter through; and I mean to lay some plans
before you."
"The Bashaw has some glimmerings of sense.
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