rs. Fisher was very fond,
too, she said, of flowers, and once when she was spending a week-end
with her father at Box Hill--

"Who lived at Box Hill?" interrupted Mrs. Wilkins, who hung on
Mrs. Fisher's reminiscences, intensely excited by meeting somebody who
had actually been familiar with all the really and truly and
undoubtedly great--actually seen them, heard them talking, touched
them.

Mrs. Fisher looked at her over the top of her glasses in some
surprise. Mrs. Wilkins, in her eagerness to tear the heart out quickly
of Mrs. Fisher's reminiscences, afraid that at any moment Mrs.
Arbuthnot would take her away and she wouldn't have heard half, had
already interrupted several times with questions which appeared
ignorant to Mrs. Fisher.

"Meredith of course," said Mrs. Fisher rather shortly. "I
remember a particular week-end"--she continued. "My father often took
me, but I always remember this week-end particularly--"

"Did you know Keats?" eagerly interrupted Mrs. Wilkins.

Mrs. Fisher, after a pause, said with sub-acid reserve that she
had been unacquainted with both Keats and Shakespeare.

"Oh of course--how ridiculous of me!" cried Mrs. Wilkins,
flushing scarlet. "It's because"--she floundered--"it's because the
immortals somehow still seem alive, don't they--as if they were here,
going to walk into the room in another minute--and one forgets they are
dead. In fact one knows perfectly well that they're not dead--not
nearly so dead as you and I even now," she assured Mrs. Fisher, who
observed her over the top of her glasses.

"I thought I saw Keats the other day," Mrs. Wilkins incoherently
proceeded, driven on by Mrs. Fisher's look over the top of her glasses.
"In Hampstead--crossing the road in front of that house--you know--the
house where he lived--"

Mrs. Arbuthnot said they must be going.

Mrs. Fisher did nothing to prevent them.

"I really thought I saw him," protested Mrs. Wilkins, appealing
for belief first to one and then to the other while waves of colour
passed over her face, and totally unable to stop because of Mrs.
Fisher's glasses and the steady eyes looking at her over their tops. "I
believe I did see him--he was dressed in a--"

Even Mrs. Arbuthnot looked at her now, and in her gentlest voice
said they would be late for lunch.

It was at this point that Mrs. Fisher asked for references. She
had no wish to find herself shut up for four weeks with somebody who
saw things. It is