offend you."

"My dear boy, a tough-hided traveler does not easily take offense. Shall
we walk? D'you know, Master Desmond, I fancy I could make a shrewd guess
at your trouble. Your brother--Richard, I think you said?--is a farmer,
he was born a farmer, he has the air of a farmer, and a well-doing farmer
to boot. But we are not all born with a love for mother earth, and you,
meseems, have dreamed of a larger life than lies within the pin folds of
a farm. To tell the truth, my lad, I have been studying you."

They were walking now side by side along the Newport road. Desmond felt
that the stranger was becoming personal; but his manner was so suave and
sympathetic that he could not take offense.

"Yes, I have been studying you," continued Diggle. "And what is the sum
of my discovery? You are wasting your life here. A country village is no
place for a boy of ideas and imagination, of warm blood and springing
fancy. The world is wide, my friend: why not adventure forth?"

"I have indeed thought of it, Mr. Diggle, but--"

"But me no buts," interrupted Diggle, with a smile. "Your age is--"

"Near sixteen."

"Ah, still a boy; you have a year ere you reach the bourne of young
manhood, as the Romans held it. But what matters that? Was not Scipio
Africanus--namesake of the ingenuous youth that serves me--styled boy at
twenty? Yet you are old enough to walk alone, and not in leading
strings--or waiting maybe for dead men's shoes."