My neck is n't worth much to anyone , which , I suppose , is why I 've never broken it ; and my Lombardies never look out-at-elbows . My mother was especially fond of them . She liked their dignity and their stand-offishness . They do n't hobnob with every Tom , Dick and Harry . If it 's pines for company , master , it 's Lombardies for society . '' We stepped from the front doorstone into the garden . There was another entrance -- a sagging gate flanked by two branching white lilacs . From it a little dappled path led to a huge apple-tree in the centre , a great swelling cone of rosy blossom with a mossy circular seat around its trunk . But Abel 's favourite seat , so he told me , was lower down the slope , under a little trellis overhung with the delicate emerald of young hop-vines . He led me to it and pointed proudly to the fine view of the harbour visible from it . The early sunset glow of rose and flame had faded out of the sky ; the water was silvery and mirror-like ; dim sails drifted along by the darkening shore . A bell was ringing in a small Catholic chapel across the harbour . Mellowly and dreamily sweet the chime floated through the dusk , blent with the moan of the sea . The great revolving light at the channel trembled and flashed against the opal sky , and far out , beyond the golden sand-dunes of the bar , was the crinkled gray ribbon of a passing steamer 's smoke . `` There , is n't that view worth looking at ? '' said old Abel , with a loving , proprietary pride . `` You do n't have to pay anything for it , either . All that sea and sky free -- ` without money and without price ' . Let 's sit down here in the hop-vine arbour , master . There 'll be a moonrise presently .
I 'm never tired XXXXX finding out what a moonrise sheen can be like over that sea .
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