He sings of the sunshine, the buoyant air; the pure and simple joy of existence is beating in his little heart.

The things which lie behind the hills will never sadden him.

His kingdom is here, and he is content." Borrowdean's smile was a little cynical.

He was essentially of that order of men who are dwellers in cities, and even the sting of the salt breeze blowing across the marshes--marshes riven everywhere with long arms of the sea--could bring no colour to his pale cheeks.
"Your little bird--a lark, I think you called it," he remarked, "may be a very eloquent prophet for the whole kingdom of his species, but the song of life for a bird and that for a man are surely different things!" "Not so very different after all," Mannering answered, still watching the bird.

"The longer one lives, the more clearly one recognizes the absolute universality of life." Borrowdean shrugged his shoulders, with a little gesture of impatience.
He had left London at a moment when he could ill be spared, and had not travelled to this out-of-the-way corner of the kingdom to exchange purposeless platitudes with a man whose present attitude towards life at any rate he heartily despised.