" says Dicky Browne. "That
is a favorite amusement of his, and it rather makes a mess of the
meaning contained in holy writ. He is rather touchy about that last
little _fiasco_ of his when reading before the bishop the other day, so
I thought I would tell him a story to-day that chimed in deliciously
with his own little mistake, and, I doubt not, brought it fresh to his
mind."

"What a wicked humor you must have been in," says Portia. "Tell the
story to us now."

"You have heard it, I daresay. I only repeated it to Boer in the fond
hope he would go away if I did, but it failed me. It was about the
fellow who was reading the morning lesson--and he came to the words,
'and he took unto him a wife'--then he turned over two pages by mistake,
and went on, 'and he pitched her with pitch within and without!' I don't
think Boer liked my little story, but still he wouldn't go away."

"He is a dreadfully prosy person, and very material," says Portia, when
they have all laughed a little.

"He is a jolly nuisance," says Mr. Browne.

"He hasn't got much soul, if you mean that," says Roger--

"'A primrose by a river's brim,
A yellow primrose is to him
And it is nothing more.'"

"That _is_ such utter nonsense," says Dulce, tilting her pretty nose and
casting a slighting glance at her _fiance_ from eyes that are

"The greenest of things blue,
The bluest of things gray."

"What more _would_ it be?--a hollyhock, perhaps? or a rhododendron, eh?"

"Anything you like," says Roger, calmly, which rather finishes the
discussion.

The night belongs to warm, lovable June; all the windows are wide open;
the perfume of flowers comes to them from the gardens beneath, that are
flooded with yellow moonshine. So still it is, so calm, that one can
almost hear the love-song the languid breeze is whispering to the
swaying boughs.

Across the table come the dreamy sighs of night, and sink into Portia's
heart, as she sits silent, pleased, listening to all around, yet a
little grieved in that her host is strangely silent, too, and looks as
one might who is striving to hear the sound of a distant footstep, that
comes not ever.

"He is always that way when Fabian absents himself," says Dicky Browne,
with so little preface that Portia starts. "He adores the ground he
walks on, and all that sort of thing. Speak to him and get him out of
it."

"What shall I say?" asks Miss Vibart, somewhat