confute and annihilate the wretched thing, to crush it by the heavy artillery of reason. Nature herself was eccentric, he told himself. Had she not once at least sent snow on Derby Day? Did she not ruin with frost her own crops?
"Na - ture - dis - cou - ra - ges - ec - ec - cen - tri - ci - ty!" crunched his boots.
"Ec-cen-tri-ci-ty," pounded his pack.
"Tri-ci-ty," shrieked the wind gleefully.
Confound it! He would think of other things; of the life before him, of the good pals who had "gone west," of books and pictures, of love and tobacco, of romance and wandering, of all that made life worth while. It was absurd to be hypnotised by a phrase.
No; the moment his thoughts were left to themselves, they returned precipitately to the little Grub Street absurdity. It clung to him like a pursuing fury, this nonsensical, illogical and peculiarly irritating phrase.
"Nature discourages eccentricity!"
He strove to recall all the eccentricities of Nature of which he had ever heard. Confute the accursed thing he would at all costs.
It was by way of fat women and five legged sheep that he eventually stumbled across his own family. In spite of the rain and of his own detestably uncomfortable condition, he laughed aloud. Every relative he had was eccentric; yet heaven knew they had not lacked encouragement!
From the other side of the hedge a miserable-
