“Granted,” said the Parson; “but what follows? The saying is good, but I
don’t see the application.”
“A thousand pardons!” replied Dr. Riccabocca, with all the urbanity of an
Italian; “but it seems to me, that if you had given the sixpence to the
_fanciullo_—that is, to this good little boy—without telling him the story
about the donkey, you would never have put him and yourself into this
awkward dilemma.”
“But, my dear sir,” whispered the Parson, mildly, as he inclined his lips
to the Doctor’s ear, “I should then have lost the opportunity of
inculcating a moral lesson—you understand.”
Dr. Riccabocca shrugged his shoulders, restored his pipe to his mouth, and
took a long whiff. It was a whiff eloquent, though cynical—a whiff
peculiar to your philosophical smoker—a whiff that implied the most
absolute but the most placid incredulity as to the effect of the Parson’s
moral lesson.
“Still you have not given us your decision,” said the Parson, after a
pause.
The doctor withdrew the pipe. “_Cospetto!_” said he. “He who scrubs the
head of an ass wastes his soap.”
“If you scrubbed mine fifty times over with those enigmatical proverbs of
yours,” said the Parson, testily, “you would not make it any the wiser.”
“My good sir,” said the Doctor, bowing low from his perch on the stile, “I
never presumed to say that there were more asses than one in the story;
but I thought that I could not better explain my meaning, which is simply
this—you scrubbed the ass’s head, and therefore you must lose the soap.
Let the _fanciullo_ have the sixpence; and a great sum it is, too, for a
little boy, who may spend it all upon pocket-money!”
“There, Lenny—you hear?” said the Parson, stretching out the sixpence. But
Lenny retreated, and cast on the umpire a look of great aversion and
disgust.
“Please, Master Dale,” said he, obstinately, “I’d rather not.”
“It is a matter of feeling, you see,” said the Parson, turning to the
umpire; “and I believe the boy is right.”
“If it is a matter of feeling,” replied Dr. Riccabocca, “there is no more
to be said on it. When Feeling comes in at the door, Reason has nothing to
do but to jump out of the window.”
“Go, my good boy,” said the Parson, pocketing the coin; “but stop! give me
your hand first. _There_—I understand you—good-by!”
Lenny’s eyes glistened as the Parson shook him by the hand, and, not
trusting himself to speak, he walked off sturdily. The Parson wiped his
forehead, and sat himself down on the stile beside the Italian. The view
before them was lovely, and both enjoyed it (though not equally) enough to
be silent for some moments. On the other side the lane, seen between gaps
in the old oaks and chestnuts that hung over the moss-grown pales of
Hazeldean Park, rose gentle verdant slopes, dotted with sheep and herds of
deer; a stately avenue stretched far away to the left, and ended at the
right hand, within a few yards of a ha-ha that divided the park from a
level sward of table-land gay with shrubs and flower-plots, relieved by
the shade of two mighty cedars. And on this platform, only seen in part,
stood the squire’s old-fashioned house, red brick, with stone mullions,
gable-ends, and quaint chimney-pots. On this side the road, immediately
facing the two gentlemen, cottage after cottage whitely emerged from the
curves in the lane, while, beyond, the ground declining gave an extensive
prospect of woods and cornfields, spires and farms. Behind, from a belt of
lilacs and evergreens, you caught a peep of the parsonage-house, backed by
woodlands, and a little noisy rill running in front. The birds were still
in the hedgerows, only as if from the very heart of the most distant
woods, there came now and then the mellow note of the cuckoo.
“Verily,” said Mr. Dale softly, “my lot has fallen on a goodly heritage.”
The Italian twitched his cloak over him, and sighed almost inaudibly.
Perhaps he thought of his own Summer Land, and felt that amidst all that
fresh verdure of the North, there was no heritage for the stranger.
However, before the Parson could notice the sigh or conjecture the cause,
Dr. Riccabocca’s thin lips took an expression almost malignant.
“_Per Bacco!_” said he; “in every country I find that the rooks settle
where the trees are the finest. I am sure that, when Noah first landed on
Ararat, he must have found some gentleman in black already settled in the
pleasantest part of the mountain, and waiting for his tenth of the cattle
as they came out of the ark.”
The Parson turned his meek eyes to the philosopher, and there was in them
something so deprecating rather than reproachful, that Dr. Riccabocca
turned away his face, and refilled his pipe. Dr. Riccabocca abhorred
priests; but though Parson Dale was emphatically a parson, he seemed at
that moment so little of what Dr. Riccabocca understood by a priest, that
the Italian’s heart smote him for his irreverent jest on the cloth.
Luckily at this moment there was a diversion to that untoward commencement
of conversation, in the appearance of no less a personage than the donkey
himself—I mean the donkey who ate the apple.