"Dreamer!" said the Earl. "I do not wonder that you grow fat."
The Duke smiled up at him. "Confound you, Harry!" said he, "I had just overreached myself into believing I had made what the world calls a mess of my career and was supremely happy. There are disturbing influences abroad to-day." He waved his hand toward the green-and-white gardens. "Old friend, you permit disreputable trespassers about Halvergate. 'See you not Goldy-locks there, in her yellow gown and green sleeves? the profane pipes, the tinkling timbrels?' Spring is at her wiles yonder,--Spring, the liar, the queen-cheat, Spring that tricks all men into happiness."
"'Fore Gad," the Earl capped his quotation, "if the heathen man could stop his ears with wax against the singing woman of the sea, then do you the like with your fingers against the trollop of the forest."
"Faith, time seals them firmlier than wax. You and I may sit snug now with never a quicker heart-beat for all her lures. Yet I seem to remember,--once a long while ago when we old fellows were somewhat sprier,--I, too, seem to remember this Spring-magic."
"Indeed," observed the Earl, seating himself ponderously, "if you refer to a certain inclination at that period of the year toward the likeliest wench in the neighborhood, so do I. 'Tis an obvious provision of nature, I take it, to secure the perpetuation of the species. Spring comes, and she sets us all a-mating--humanity, partridges, poultry, pigs, every blessed one of us she sets a-mating. Propagation, Jack--propagation is necessary, d'ye see; because," the Earl conclusively demanded, "what on earth would become of us if we didn't propagate?"
"The argument is unanswerable," the Duke conceded. "Yet I miss it,--this Spring magic that no longer sets the blood of us staid fellows a-fret."
"And I," said Lord Brudenel, "do not. It got me into the deuce of a scrape more than once."
"Yours is the sensible view, no doubt....Yet I miss it. Ah, it is not only the wenches and the red lips of old years,--it is not only that at this season lasses' hearts grow tender. There are some verses--" The Duke quoted, with a half-guilty air:
"Now I loiter, and dream to the branches swaying In furtive conference,--high overhead-- Atingle with rumors that Winter is sped And over his ruins a world goes Maying.