Falling in
with my companion's humour, I dismounted, and, after his example,
hitched my mare's rein over the rail. There was a raciness about the
adventure that took my fancy. We chose two boulders from a heap of
lesser stones close beside the beck, and divided the sandwiches, for
though I protested I was not hungry, the old gentleman insisted on
our sharing alike. And now, as the liquor warmed his heart and the
sunshine smote upon his back, his eyes sparkled, and he launched on a
flood of the gayest talk--yet always of a world that I felt was
before my time. Indeed, as he rattled on, the feeling that this must
be some Rip Van Winkle restored from a thirty years' sleep grew
stronger and stronger upon me. He spoke of Bleakirk, and displayed a
knowledge of it sufficiently thorough--intimate even--yet of the old
friends for whom he inquired many names were unknown to me, many
familiar only through their epitaphs in the windy cemetery above the
cliff. Of the rest, the pretty girls he named were now grandmothers,
the young men long since bent and rheumatic; the youngest well over
fifty. This, however, seemed to depress him little. His eyes would
sadden for a moment, then laugh again. "Well, well," he said,
"wrinkles, bald heads, and the deafness of the tomb--we have our day
notwithstanding. Pluck the bloom of it--hey? a commonplace of the
poets."
"But, sir," I put in as politely as I might, "you have not yet told
me with whom I have the pleasure of lunching.
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