Woodseer laughed, adding, that he had been of a serious mind in those days of the alternation of smooth indifference and sharp necessity, and he had plucked a flower from them.
His nature prompted him to speak of himself with simple candour, as he had done spontaneously to Chillon Kirby, yet he was now anxious to let his companion know at once the common stuff he was made of, together with the great stuff he contained. He grew conscious of an over-anxiety, and was uneasy, recollecting how he had just spoken about his naturalness, dimly if at all apprehending the cause of this disturbance within. What is a lord to a philosopher! But the world is around us as a cloak, if not a coat; in his ignorance he supposed it specially due to a lord seeking acquaintance with him, that he should expose his condition: doing the which appeared to subject him to parade his intellectual treasures and capacity for shaping sentences; and the effect upon Lord Fleetwood was an incentive to the display. Nevertheless he had a fretful desire to escape from the discomposing society of a lord; he fixed his knapsack and began to saunter.
The young lord was at his elbow. ‘I can’t part with you. Will you allow me?’
Woodseer was puzzled and had to say: ‘If you wish it.’
‘I do wish it: an hour’s walk with you. One does not meet a man like you every day. I have to join a circle of mine in Baden, but there’s no hurry; I could be disengaged for a week. And I have things to ask you, owing to my indiscretion--but you have excused it.’
Woodseer turned for a farewell gaze at the great Watzmann, and saluted him.
‘Splendid,’ said Lord Fleetwood; ‘but don’t clap names on the mountains.--I saw written in your book: “A text for Dada.” You write: “A despotism would procure a perfect solitude, but kill the ghost.” That was my thought at the place where we were at the lake. I had it. Tell me--though I could not have written it, and “ghost” is just the word, the exact word--tell me, are you of Welsh blood? “Dad” is good Welsh--pronounce it hard.’
Woodseer answered: ‘My mother was a Glamorganshire woman. My father, I know, walked up from Wales, mending boots on his road for a livelihood. He is not a bad scholar, he knows Greek enough to like it. He is a Dissenting preacher. When I strike a truism, I ‘ve a habit of scoring it to give him a peg or tuning-fork for one of his discourses. He’s a man of talent; he taught himself, and he taught me more than I learnt at school. He is a thinker in his way. He loves Nature too. I rather envy him in some respects. He and I are hunters of Wisdom on different tracks; and he, as he says, “waits for me.” He’s patient!’