'Yes,' said Rayne, 'but I never got as far as that! I read some Xenophon last January,' she added to me, 'but it was frightfully uninteresting, I thought. Nothing but: Thence he marches nineteen stages, twenty-seven parasangs to—some place or other; a city populous, prosperous and great. And the river Scamander (or Menander, or whatever it is), flows close to it, and there is a park and a palace in the middle of the city!'
'My dear!' said Mr. Cholmeley, smiling with still closed eyes, 'Menander!'
'I don't think I shall ever want to read any other Greek but Homer,' she went on, flicking with the whip-lash.
In a little:
'Perhaps, Miss Cholmeley,' I said, 'you'll like to read Plato some day, like Lady Jane Grey did. I have only read part of the Apology and the Crito; but it seemed to me that it was fine.'
'Eh? hey?' said Mr. Cholmeley, opening his eyes and erecting his head and body, 'Why, here we are!'
I gave a glance at the house. It was a small house at the other end of a garden pretty with bright flowers. There was a faint noise heard, like the wind in a row of tree-tops. Looking on, as I got down, I saw a line, about a quarter way up the house, with a pale blue band: the sea! The breeze came up softly. There was a boy waiting just by the gate for the pony, whose rein close by the mouth he now held.
I stretched my hand for Mr. Cholmeley. He rested on it, and getting down:
'It's a beautiful day for August—in Seabay,' he said, 'That is to say if I may believe what they tell me about it. An antiquarian friend of mine at Newport describes the place as a bed in a cucumber-frame, in summer. Myself I am inclined to doubt it—for reasons.'
Rayne was already down and on to open the gate; but I was there first, and unlatched and threw it inwards wide. Mr. Cholmeley passed in slowly, she following with a look at me like that of when she said: 'Well, there's the pony-carriage outside, but … I 'm afraid your box will be rather too much for it.' I went in last, with an arriving thought that I had seen her eyes somewhere before, and perhaps her face.
