But yesterday,
they were nameless waifs and strays, of uncertain origin, ashamed of
their birth, and ignorant even whether they had been duly begotten
in lawful wedlock; to-day, they were the legal inheritors of an
honoured name and a great estate, the first and foremost among the
landed gentry of a wealthy and beautiful English county.
He smiled to think what a good turn he had done unawares to those
ungrateful youths--and how little credit, as yet, they were prepared
to give him for it. In such a mood he returned to the inn to lunch.
His spirits were high. This was a good day's work, and he could
afford, indeed, to make merry with his host over it. He ordered
in a bottle of wine--such wine as the little country cellar could
produce, and invited that honest man, the landlord, to step in and
share it with him. He had tasted worse sherry on London dinner-tables,
and he told his host so. An affable man with inferiors, Mr. Montague
Nevitt! Then he strolled out by himself down the path by the brook.
It was a pleasant walk, with the water making music in little
trickles by its side, and Montague Nevitt, as a man of taste,
found it suited exactly with his temper for the moment. He noted
an undercurrent of rejoicing and triumphant cheeriness in the tone
of the stream as it plashed among the pebbles on its precipitous
bed that suggested to his mind some bars of a symphony which he
determined to compose as soon as he got home again to his beloved
fiddle.
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