pitch. But
now lay your wit down beside your candour, and descend to an every-day
level with me for a minute."

"Is it innuendo?"

"No; though I daresay it would be easier for you to respond to if it
were."

"I'm the straightforwardest of men at a word of command."

"This is a whisper. Be alert, as you were last night. Shuffle the table
well. A little liveliness will do it. I don't imagine malice, but
there's curiosity, which is often as bad, and not so lightly foiled. We
have Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer here."

"To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky!"

"Well, then, can you fence with broomsticks?"

"I have had a bout with them in my time."

"They are terribly direct."

"They 'give point', as Napoleon commanded his cavalry to do."

"You must help me to ward it."

"They will require variety in the conversation."

"Constant. You are an angel of intelligence, and if I have the judgeing
of you, I'm afraid you'll be allowed to pass, in spite of the scandal
above. Open the door; I don't unbonnet."

De Craye threw the door open.

Lady Busshe was at that moment saying, "And are we indeed to have you
for a neighbour, Dr. Middleton?"

The Rev. Doctor's reply was drowned by the new arrivals.

"I thought you had forsaken us," observed Sir Willoughby to Mrs.
Mountstuart.

"And run away with Colonel De Craye? I'm too weighty, my dear friend.
Besides, I have not looked at the wedding-presents yet."

"The very object of our call!" exclaimed Lady Culmer.

"I have to confess I am in dire alarm about mine," Lady Busshe nodded
across the table at Clara. "Oh! you may shake your head, but I would
rather hear a rough truth than the most complimentary evasion."

"How would you define a rough truth, Dr. Middleton?" said Mrs.
Mountstuart.

Like the trained warrior who is ready at all hours for the trumpet to
arms, Dr. Middleton waked up for judicial allocution in a trice.

"A rough truth, madam, I should define to be that description of truth
which is not imparted to mankind without a powerful impregnation of the
roughness of the teller."

"It is a rough truth, ma'am, that the world is composed of fools, and
that the exceptions are knaves," Professor Crooklyn furnished that
example avoided by the Rev. Doctor.

"Not to precipitate myself into the jaws of the foregone definition,
which strikes me as being as happy as Jonah's whale, that could carry
probably the most learned man of his time inside without the necessit