You know the story of how Smith and Jones were arguing, and
Smith said, 'Brown will agree with me': 'Yes,' said Jones triumphantly, 'he
will, but for my reasons!'"
LXIII
OF WRENS AND LILIES
It was the first warm and sunny day, after a cold and cloudy spring: I took
a long and leisurely walk with Father Payne down a valley among woods, of
which Father Payne was very fond. "Almost precipitous for Northamptonshire,
eh?" he used to say. I was very full of a book I had been reading, but I
could not get him to talk. He made vague and foolish replies, and said
several times, "I shall have to think that over, you know," which was, I
well knew, a polite intimation that he was not in a mood for talk. But I
persisted, and at last he said, "Hang it, you know, I'm not attending--I'm
very sorry--it isn't your fault--but there's such a lot going on
everywhere." He quoted a verse of _The Shropshire Lad_, of which he
was very fond:
"'Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more'";
adding, "That's the only instance I know of a subtraction sum made into
perfect poetry--but it's the other way round, worse luck!
"And _add_ to seventy springs a score,
_That_ only leaves me forty more!"
The birds were singing very sweetly in the copses as we passed--"That isn't
art, I believe," said Father Payne.
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