Half-an-hour later, seated between Olwen and Mrs. Otter, with Darnley and Mattie opposite him, and Jason at the foot of the table, Wolf found that the airy chatter that had been going on, ever since they began their tea, about this and that aspect of the countryside, ended by troubling him with a bitter nostalgia. His brief holiday was already near its close; and how many days and months and years of his life was he destined to spend in that accursed schoolroom! Stirred into magnetic activity by the candlelight and the strong cups of tea, his deepest will set itself to overcome this menace. “I am god of my own mind,” he said to himself; “and when I’m not actually teaching history⁠—or ‘Latin,’ as Jason would say⁠—I can recreate, out of thin air, the essences of earth, grass, rain, wind, valleys, and hills! I’ve only to concentrate my mind on the living eidolons in my mind; and even if they put me into prison⁠—and Blacksod School is a prison⁠—I ought still to be able to cry at the end like my father, ‘Christ, I’ve had a happy life!’ ”