"What is his greatest virtue?"
"His greatest virtue," replied Basil, "is that he always tells the
literal truth."
"Well, really," cried Rupert, stamping about between cold and
anger, and slapping himself like a cabman, "he doesn't seem to have
been very literal or truthful in this case, nor you either. Why the
deuce, may I ask, have you brought us out to this infernal place?"
"He was too truthful, I confess," said Basil, leaning against the
tree; "too hardly veracious, too severely accurate. He should have
indulged in a little more suggestiveness and legitimate romance.
But come, it's time we went in. We shall be late for dinner."
Rupert whispered to me with a white face:
"Is it a hallucination, do you think? Does he really fancy he sees
a house?"
"I suppose so," I said. Then I added aloud, in what was meant to be
a cheery and sensible voice, but which sounded in my ears almost as
strange as the wind:
"Come, come, Basil, my dear fellow. Where do you want us to go?"
"Why, up here," cried Basil, and with a bound and a swing he was
above our heads, swarming up the grey column of the colossal tree.
"Come up, all of you," he shouted out of the darkness, with the
voice of a schoolboy. "Come up. You'll be late for dinner."
The two great elms stood so close together that there was scarcely
a yard anywhere, and in some places not more than a foot, between
them.
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