ted you."

"Don't mention it," said the rector, with his lofty politeness. "Another
time will do. It is a habit of mine, Mr. Nugent, to read aloud in my
family circle. As a clergyman and a lover of poetry (in both capacities)
I have long cultivated the art of elocution----"

"My dear sir, excuse me, you have cultivated it all wrong!"

Mr. Finch paused, thunderstruck. A man in his presence presuming to have
an opinion of his own! a man in the rectory parlor capable of
interrupting the rector in the middle of a sentence! guilty of the insane
audacity of telling him, as a reader--with Shakespeare open before
them--that he read wrong!

"Oh, we heard you as we came in!" proceeded Nugent, with the most
undiminished confidence, expressed in the most gentlemanlike manner. "You
read it like this." He took up _Hamlet_ and read the opening line of the
Fourth Scene, ("The air bites shrewdly. It is very cold") with an
irresistibly-accurate imitation of Mr. Finch. "That's nor the way Hamlet
would speak. No man in his position would remark that it was very cold in
that bow-wow manner. What is Shakespeare before all things? True to
nature; always true to nature. What condition is Hamlet in when he is
expecting to see the Ghost? He is nervous, and he feels the cold. Let him
show it naturally; let him speak as any other man would speak, under the
circumstances. Look here! Quick and quiet--like this. 'The air bites
shrewdly'--there Hamlet stops and shivers--pur-rer-rer! 'it is very
cold.' That's the way to read Shakespeare!"

Mr. Finch lifted his head into the air as high as it could possibly go,
and brought the flat of his hand down with a solemn and sounding smack on
the open book.

"Allow me to say, sir----!" he began.

Nugent stopped him again, more good-humouredly than ever.

"You don't agree with me? All right! Quite useless to dispute about it. I
don't know what you may be--I am the most opinionated man in existence.
Sheer waste of time, my dear sir, to attempt convincing Me. Now, just
look at that child!" Here Mr. Nugent Dubourg's attention was suddenly
attracted by the baby. He twisted round on his heel, and addressed Mrs.
Finch. "I take the liberty of saying, ma'am, that a more senseless dress
doesn't exist, than the dress that is put, in this country, on infants of
tender years. What are the three main functions which that child--that
charming child of yours-performs? He sucks; he sleeps; and he grows. At
the present