Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/101

Rh are prominent. The village, nestling at the foot of the mountain, has a thousand more interests hidden away about it, than all the snowy peaks, giddy ravines, and dazzling splendours of lonely mountain heights. Though world on world, in myriad myriad, roll round us ... What know we greater than the soul? ... than man? Yet no life—is it not strange?—is so stunted and distraught at the present day as the social."

"You are going to alter that here, at any rate," she said, cheerfully. "In this valley, human existence is not to be the only sorrowful failure in creation."

"I hope not," he said, thoughtfully, flicking a fly from his leader's back.

"Whose sheep are those sweeping round the hill beyond the lake?" asked the girl. "What yellow specks the lambs appear! How distinctly the bleating of the little truants is carried across the water!"

"Do you not recognize your own property?" replied Travers, laughing.

"I? I have not one lamb to my name."

"No great loss. The sweet pet-lamb is a myth; the reality has cream-clogged chin, body like a child's toy-horse, stiff legs to fit a hogget. When it matures into something comely, it ungratefully takes itself off to the flocks. But do you not know that those sheep are yours?"

"The property of the village you mean."

"Yes, and a very valuable one too, I assure you," replied Travers.

"But the profit will be your father's."

"Not at all. He will charge a nominal interest, that is all. By degrees his share will be purchased, and you will own the entire property."

"I wonder where father is," said the girl after a time, with evident anxiety. "We ought to have met him."