"There now, that will set you off thinking of your knights again!
But you must not. Truly, you must not. For it is quite true, dear; you
are a dreamer, a poet. You do indeed belong to the Arcadian Hills. You
should be there now, playing a gentle shepherd's pipe and herding his
peaceful flocks. And instead--alas!"--she looked at him in perplexity
which was partly real and partly assumed--"instead you are here in this
awful wilderness, carrying a rifle longer and heavier than yourself, and
trying to pretend that you like to kill wild beasts, or can endure to
hurt any living thing."
David said nothing; there seemed to be no response for him to make. When
a well-grown youth of eighteen or thereabouts is spoken to by a girl
near his own age as he had just been spoken to by Ruth, he rarely finds
anything to say. No words could do justice to what he feels. And there
is nothing for him to do either, unless it be to take refuge in a
dignified silence which disdains the slightest notice of the offence.
This was what David resorted to, and, bending down, he calmly and
quietly raised his forgotten rifle from the ground to his shoulder.
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