The boy was waiting for the schoolmaster at the gate as he went out. “Well, was it any use?” he cried eagerly.
“My dear chap,” said that gentleman, “you are a little noodle. That’s what you are.”
And the boy, as he trotted by the schoolmaster’s side, found something vaguely comforting in this cryptic speech.
All service ranks the same with God: If now, as formerly He trod Paradise, His presence fills Our earth, each only as God wills Can work--God’s puppets, best and worst, Are we; there is no last nor first.
Say not “a small event”! Why “small”? Costs it more pain than this, ye call A “great event” should come to pass, Than that? Untwine me from the mass Of deeds which make up life, one deed Power shall fall short in or exceed!
Every night the Alfresco Entertainers gave their performance on a little platform set right under the shadow of the great cliff; while in front of them, not a dozen yards away, the rhythmic wash of the sea on a rocky shore seemed a sort of accompaniment to their songs, much softer and more tuneful than that of the poor, jingly, rheumatic piano, which had nothing between it and every sort of weather save an ancient mackintosh cover.
The village itself was but a shelf of shore with one long, straggling, lop-sided street: cottage and shop and great hotel set down haphazard, cheek by jowl, all apparently somewhat inept excrescences on the side of the green-clad cliffs rising behind them straight and steep, a sheer five hundred feet, and just across the narrow line of red road lies the Bristol Channel, with, on a clear day, the Welsh coast plainly in view.
At ten years old, people are generally found more interesting than scenery, and Basil took a great interest in the variety entertainers. They looked so smart and debonair, he thought, in their blue reefers, white duck trousers, and gold-laced yachting caps--though they none of them ever put out to sea. There were five of them altogether, two ladies and three men. Basil did not care so much about the ladies, in spite of the rows of Chinese lanterns that outlined the little stage and shone so pink in the darkness; there seemed no glamor or mystery about them. They were not transcendently beautiful like the gauzy good fairy of pantomime, or the peerless, fearless circus lady in pink and spangles: neither did they possess the mirth-provoking qualities of the dauntless three clad in yatching garb. One always sang sentimentally of “daddies,” or “aunties,” or “chords,” that had somehow gone amissing; and the other--Basil almost disliked that other--sang about things he could in nowise understand, in a hoarse voice, and danced in between the verses, and she didn’t dance at all prettily, for she had thick ankles and high shoulders.