Page:The Trespasser, Lawrence, 1912.djvu/124

116 struggled. There was a faint splashing and shouting to be heard even from a distance. The farmer’s wife and children stood by ready to rush in with assistance if necessary.

Helena laughed with pleasure.

“That is really a very quaint and primitive proceeding,” she said. “It is cruder than Theocritus.”

“In an instant it makes me wish I were a farmer,” he laughed. “I think every man has a passion for farming at the bottom of his blood. It would be fine to be plain-minded, to see no further than the end of one’s nose, and to own cattle and land.”

“Would it?” asked Helena sceptically.

“If I had a red face, and went to sleep as soon as I sat comfortable, I should love it,” he said.

“It amuses me to hear you long to be stupid,” she replied.

“To have a simple, slow-moving mind and an active life is the desideratum.”

“Is it?” she asked ironically.

“I would give anything to be like that,” he said.

“That is, not to be yourself,” she said pointedly.

He laughed without much heartiness.

“Don’t they seem a long way off?” he said, staring at the bucolic scene. “They are farther than Theocritus—down there is farther than Sicily, and more than twenty centuries from us. I wish it weren’t.”

“Why do you?” she cried, with curious impatience.

He laughed.

Crossing the down, scattered with dark bushes, they came directly opposite the path through the furze.

“There it is!” she cried. “How could we miss it?”