It was not like the Duke to walk briskly on a hot day, nor indeed to do anything in a hurry under unfavourable circumstances. The; major part of his life had been devoted to taking it easily. There had been very little unpleasantness through all his years. The world was a comfortable place for him, so he had regarded it as a pleasant world and had come to believe that all the people in it were very pleasant people. He had, therefore, treated everyone kindly and was accustomed to meet all persons and all incidents with perfect grace and good humour. Revolution, the loss of an office in which his functions had been purely decorative and his income a handsome one, and finally poverty, had brought an ever increasing number of petty crosses and trials. He tried to be philosophical. He tried to forget the bill collector when he could not pay him; he tried not to be impatient with the womenfolk whose tempers poverty was sharpening; and he tried to hope that some one of his numerous friends and relatives, still rich and powerful, would find a place for him in which he could redeem himself. But the poorer he got the harder were his buffets. He was received in the homes of his wealthy relatives, from all of whom he had negotiate ed small Joans, with little more courtesy than he showed the imfortunate collector who stormed his own humble threshold. When he had been forced to sit for hours in the gatehouse of some relative who had many times eaten and drunk fraternally at his own board and had finally been turned away without even seeing the man's face, a great bitterness would take the place of the natural serenity and sweetness of his character. And each time it would take longer for the humiliation to wear away. But with it all he persisted in being something of an altruist, and one one merry song from a strolling actor, one cool breeze on a hot day, could atill wipe out the memory of much bitterness. In the cool of the archway his face slackened, therefore, the drawn lines in his face relaxed and he lifted up his bird cage and whistled to his thrush.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.