“I suspected it was unscholarly. It’s so beautiful.”
“The tune’s right enough,” said Freddy, “but the words are rotten. Why throw up the sponge?”
“How stupidly you talk!” said his sister. The Santa Conversazione was broken up. After all, there was no reason that Lucy should talk about Greece or thank him for persuading her mother, so he said goodbye.
Freddy lit his bicycle lamp for him in the porch, and with his usual felicity of phrase, said: “This has been a day and a half.”
“Stop thine ear against the singer—”
“Wait a minute; she is finishing.”
“From the red gold keep thy finger; Vacant heart and hand and eye Easy live and quiet die.”
“I love weather like this,” said Freddy.
Mr. Beebe passed into it.
The two main facts were clear. She had behaved splendidly, and he had helped her. He could not expect to master the details of so big a change in a girl’s life. If here and there he was dissatisfied or puzzled, he must acquiesce; she was choosing the better part.
“Vacant heart and hand and eye—”
Perhaps the song stated “the better part” rather too strongly. He half fancied that the soaring accompaniment—which he did not lose in the shout of the gale—really agreed with Freddy, and was gently criticizing the words that it adorned:
“Vacant heart and hand and eye Easy live and quiet die.”