iolet,' said her husband, 'how can you expect to feel like poets
and lovers? And halloo! he is coming it strong! "Poems by A."; "The
White Hind and other Poems"; "Gwyneth: a tale in verse"; "Farewell
to Pausilippo", by the Earl of St. Erme. Well done, Percy! Are you
collecting original serenades for Theodora? I'll never betray where they
came from.'

'It is all in the way of trade,' said Percy.

'Reviewing?' said Theodora.

'Yes; there has been such an absurd amount of flattery bestowed on them
that it must provoke any reasonable being. It really is time to put
forth a little common sense, since the magazines will have it that earls
write better than other people.'

'Some of the verses in Lord St. Erme's last volume seem to me very
pretty,' said Violet.

'There, she is taking up the cudgels for her countryman,' said Arthur,
always pleased when she put herself forward.

'Which do you mean?' said Percy, turning on her incredulously.

'I like those about the Bay of Naples,' she answered.

'You do not mean these?' and he read them in so good-humoured a tone
that no one could be vexed, but marking every inconsistent simile and
word tortured out of its meaning, and throwing in notes and comments on
the unfaithfulness of the description.

'There! it would do as well for the Bay of Naples as for the farm-yard
at Martindale--all water and smoke.'

Arthur and Theodora laughed, but Violet stood her ground, blushingly but
resolutely.

'Anything so read would sound ill,' she said. 'I dare say it is all
right about the faults, but some parts seem to me very pretty. This
stanza, about the fishermen's boats at night, like sparks upon the
water, is one I like, because it is what John once described to me.'

'You are right, Mrs. Martindale,' said Percy, reading a second time the
lines to which she alluded. 'They do recall the evening scene; Mount
Vesuvius and its brooding cloud, and the trails of phosphoric light upon
the sea. I mark these for approval. But have you anything to say for
this Address to the Mediterranean?'

He did not this time mar the poem in the reading, and it was not needed,
the compound words and twisted epithets were so extravagant that no one
gainsaid Arthur's sentence, 'Stilts and bladders!'

'And all that abuse of the savage north is unpardonable,' said Theodora.
'Sluggish torpid minds, indeed, frozen by skies bound in mist belts! If
he would stay at home and mind his own business, he would not ha