Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/27

Rh Arminell could not refrain from a laugh. "Really, Mr. Saltren, you are not complimentary to our island."

"Call it the Isle of Rahat la Koum, Turkish Delight, or Guava Jelly—anything luscious. One who has eaten salt pork and supped vinegar cannot at once tutor his palate to everything saccharine to a syrup."

"But what really troubles you in the Isle of Guava?"

"I am not a native but a stranger. Your tongue is by me acquired. There are even tones and inflexions of voice in you I cannot attain because my vocal organs got set in another world. A man like myself taken up and carried into a different sphere by another hand is inevitably so self-conscious that his self-consciousness is a perpetual torment to him. According to the apocryphal tale, an angel caught Habakkuk by the hair and carried him with a mess of pottage in his hands through the air, and deposited him in Daniel's den of lions. Your father has been my angel, who has taken me up and transported me, and now I am in a den of lordly beasts who stalk round me and wonder how I came among them, and turn up their noses at the bowl I carry in my shaking hands."

"And you want to escape from us lions?"

"Pardon me—I am equally ill at ease elsewhere, I have associated with lions till I can only growl."

"And lash yourself raw," laughed Arminell; "you know a lion has a nail at the end of his tail, wherewith he goads himself."

"I can torture myself—that is true," said Saltren, in a disquieted tone. "My lord will give me a living and provide for me if I will enter the Church, but that is precisely an atmosphere I do not relish—and what am I to do? I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed."

"Mr. Saltren, you are not at ease in the lion's den, but suppose you were to crawl out and get into the fields?"

"I should lose my way, having been carried by the