thing _rather_, and
nothing _very_! and thinks Oswald the most wonderful man in the world.
She can't be very clever herself, if she thinks that, can she? Oswald
was always a regular dunce!"

"Oh, `dunce' is too strong a word, Chubby! He was not brilliant, but
you must remember that he suffered from contrast with his companions.
Rex was very bright, if he was not exactly clever, and it is not often
that you come across such a really scholarly boy as Rob Darcy!"

Peggy busied herself with the arrangement of the tea-tray without
glancing in her friend's direction, and with an air of studied
carelessness. She herself knew that she had dragged Rob's name into the
discussion for no other object than to set Mellicent's ready tongue to
work on a subject about which she was longing for information, and she
was alarmed lest her intention might be suspected. Mellicent, however,
had retained her comfortable obtuseness, and rose to the bait with
innocent alacrity.

"Well, I don't know if _you_ call it scholarly to think of nothing in
the world but beetles, and grubby little plants that no one ever heard
of before; but _I_ call it idiotic. He is worse than Esther, because,
after all, schoolboys are human creatures, and sometimes you can't help
liking them, though they are so tiresome, but nobody could love a
beetle! I said so once to Rob, and he snubbed me dreadfully, and talked
at me for half an hour. I didn't understand half he said--for it was
all in technical beetley language, but it was meant to prove that it was
wrong to say anything of the sort, or refuse to see the beauty hidden
away in the meanest created thing."

"Quite true! I agree with Rob. He was perfectly right."

"But, Peggy, a beetle! And to care for nothing else! You have no idea
what a regular old hermit Rob has become. He is perfectly wrapped up in
beetles!" cried Mellicent, with a descriptive elegance of diction, at
which her hearer shuddered visibly. "He takes no interest in anything
else!"

Peggy smiled, and her head took a complacent tilt.

"That's bad! That will have to be altered. He'll take interest in
_me_, my dear, or there'll be trouble! I believe in a man devoting
himself to his work, but Rob is too nice to be allowed to bury himself
completely. I must rouse him up! A fortnight from now we will meet
again, and the treatment will begin. Meanest creatures are all very
well in their way, but superior ones demand their own share o