Plainly enough could
the Fool see, even though he was only dreamily a-looking, a bright
golden figure seated upon the saddle with the King's Favorite. This,
as all men know, was Preferment, and a sudden wistful longing seized
upon the Fool's heart, that he had never known the like of since the
time he had cried for the moon. His jaw dropped, and his eyes grew
misty. In a little while the troop was by, gone around the hill, but
the Fool could not forget them, and many new desires tugged at his
heart.
"Why," he wondered, "doth not Preferment live with me? Am I not as fit
a man as the King's Favorite?" And he stretched out his long legs and
looked at them.
As long as the Fool was occupied with dreaming and laying the sods on
his house, or hunting for the dun deer of a moonlit night, he was
company enough for himself, turning his fancies over and over in his
mind, as the wind bundles the clouds about the sky; then when he had
arranged his conceptions to his taste, he was free to admire them
undisturbed, until a new fancy happened along to displace them; just
as the wind leaves off driving the clouds at sunset, and in the west
there is a sweet tableau for men to look at, till night blots out the
scene.
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