for admiration. If Phoebe had said exactly what she thought, it would
have been that her ear was cruelly outraged: but Phoebe was not
accustomed to the sharp speeches which passed for wit with Rhoda. She
fell back on a matter of fact.

"Does history say nothing more about her?"

"Of course it does! It says the Vandals martyred her. Phoebe, you
can't criticise poetry as if it were prose."

It struck Phoebe that Rhoda's poetry was very like prose; but she said
meekly, "Please go on. I ask your pardon."

So Rhoda went on--

"Her glorious line has passed away--
The wild dream of a by-gone day!
We know not from what throne she sprang,
Britain is silent in her song--"

"What's the matter?" asked Rhoda, interrupting herself.

"I ask your pardon," said Phoebe again. "But--will _song_ do with
_sprang_? And if Ursula was a real person, as I thought she had been,
she wasn't a wild dream, was she?"

"Phoebe, I do believe you haven't a bit of taste!" said Rhoda. "I'll
try you with one more verse, and then--

"O wake her not! Ages have passed
Since her fair eyelids closed at last."

"I should think, then, you would find it difficult to wake her,"
remarked Phoebe: but Rhoda went on as if she had not heard it,--

"For twice six hundred years, 'tis said,
Hath rested 'neath yon tomb her head,--
That head which soft reposed of old
On couch of satin and of gold."

"Dear!" was Phoebe's comment. "I didn't know they had satin sofas
twelve hundred years ago."

"'Tis no earthly use reading poetry to you!" exclaimed Rhoda, throwing
down the book. "You haven't one bit of feeling for it, no more than if
it were a sermon I was reading! Tie your hood on, and make haste, and
we'll go and see the Maidens."

Phoebe seemed rather troubled to have annoyed her cousin, though she
evidently did not perceive how it had been effected. The girls tied on
their hoods, and Rhoda, who was not really ill-natured, soon recovered
herself when she got into the fresh air.

"Now, while we are going across the Park," she said, "I will tell you
something about the old gentlewomen. I couldn't this morning, you know,
more than their names, because there was Madam listening. But now,
hark! Mrs Dolly Jennings--the one who came in first, you know, and sat
over against Lady Betty--I don't know what kin she is, but there is some
kin between her and the Duchess of Marlborough. She is the oldest of
the Maidens, and the bes