Its talk was
chilly, and its ripples, which came half from the obstructions in
its channel below, and half from the wind that ruffled it above,
were not smiles, but wrinkles rather--even in the sunshine. Thomas
felt cold himself, but the cold was of the sort that comes from the
look rather than the feel of things. He did not, however, much care
how he felt--not enough, certainly, to have made him put on a
great-coat: he was not deeply interested in himself. With his stick,
a very ordinary bit of oak, he kept knocking pebbles into the water,
and listlessly watching them splash. The wind blew, the sun shone,
the water ran, the ferns waved, the clouds went drifting over his
head, but he never looked up, or took any notice of the doings of
Mother Nature at her house-work: everything seemed to him to be
doing only what it had got to do, because it had got it to do, and
not because it cared about it, or had any end in doing it. For he,
like every other man, could read nature only by his own lamp, and
this was very much how he had hitherto responded to the demands made
upon him.
His life had not been a very interesting one, although early
passages in it had been painful.
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