II
'Can you reckon him up, brother?' said Sinfi, taking my meerschaum
from my lips to refill it for me, as she was fond of doing.
'No.'
'Nor I nuther,' said Sinfi. 'Nor I can't pen his dukkerin' nuther,
though often's the time I've tried it.'
During this time the two friends seemed to have finished their
colloquy upon 'composition'; for they both came up to us. Sinfi rose;
I sat still on the grass, smoking my pipe, listening to the chatter
of the water as it rushed over the rocks. By this time my curiosity
in the younger man had died away. My mind was occupied with the
dream-picture of a little blue-eyed girl struggling with a wounded
heron. I had noticed, however, that he of the piercing eyes did not
look at me again, having entirely exhausted at a glance such interest
as I had momentarily afforded him; while his companion seemed quite
unconscious of my presence as he stood there, his large, full, deep,
brown eyes gazing apparently at something over my head, a long way
off. Also I had noticed that 'Visionary' was stamped upon this man's
every feature--that he seemed an inspired baby of forty, talking
there to his companion and to Sinfi, the sun falling upon his long,
brown, curly hair, mixed with grey, which fell from beneath his hat,
and floated around his collar like a mane.
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