nd
yours the--the--I know--the orchis! I have read of a woman with an
orchidaceous face!'

Teeth, tongue, lips, eyes, and nose were at once made to serve in
hitting off an indescribable likeness to an orchis blossom, which was
rapturously applauded, till Ethel, relaxing the strain and permitting
herself to laugh triumphantly at her own achievement, said, 'There! I
do pride myself on being of a high order of the grotesque.'

'It is not the grotesque that he means.' said Aubrey, 'he is very
cracked indeed. He declares that when you came and sat by him the day
before yesterday, you were perfectly lovely.'

'Oh, then I understand, and it is no matter,' said Ethel.

CHAPTER V

They stwons, they stwons, they stwons, they stwons.
--Scouring of the White Horse

'So' (wrote Ethel in her daily letter to her father) 'mine is at
present a maternal mission to Leonard, and it is highly gratifying. I
subscribe to all your praise of him, and repent of my ungracious
murmurs at his society. You had the virtue, and I have the reward (the
usual course of this world), for his revival is a very fresh and
pleasant spectacle, burning hot with enthusiasm. Whatever we do, he
overdoes, till I recollect how Wilkes said he had never been a Wilkite.
Three days ago, a portentous-looking ammonite attracted his attention;
and whereas he started from the notion that earth was dirt, and stones
were stones, the same all over the world, he has since so far
outstripped his instructors, that as I write this he is drawing a plan
of the strata, with the inhabitants dramatically arranged, Aubrey
suggesting tragic scenes and uncomplimentary likenesses. His talent
for drawing shows that Averil's was worth culture. If our geology
alarm Richard, tell him that I think it safer to get it over young, and
to face apparent discrepancies with revelation, rather than leave them
to be discovered afterwards as if they had been timidly kept out of
sight. And whether Hugh Miller's theory be right or wrong, his grand
fervid language leaves the conviction that undoubting confidence in
revelation consists with the clearest and most scientific mind.'

* * * * *

'June 30th.--I consider my boys as returned to their normal relations.
I descended on them as they were sparring like lion-cubs at play,
Leonard desisted in confusion at my beholding such savage doings, but
cool and easy, not having turn