e dullest lady that ever faithfully photographed
the trivial. Years ago I happened to be crossing Putney Bridge, in a
frock-coat and silk hat, when a passing member of the proletariat dug
his elbows in his comrade's ribs and, quoting a music-hall tag of the
period, shouted "He's got 'em on!" whereupon both burst into peals of
robustious but inane laughter. Now, if I had turned to them, and said,
"He would be funnier if I hadn't," and paraphrased, however wittily,
Carlyle's ironical picture of a nude court of St. James's, they would
have punched my head under the confused idea that I was trying to
bamboozle them. Which brings me to my point of departure, my remark to
Judith as to the futility of jesting to unpercipient ears.

I did not take up her retort.

"And what was the end of the romance?" I asked.

"He borrowed twenty francs of me to pay for the _dejeuner_, and his
_l'annee trente_ delicacy of soul compelled him to blot my existence
forever from his mind."

"He never repaid you?" I asked.

"For a humouristic philosopher," cried Judith, "you are delicious!"

Judith is too fond of that word "delicious." She uses it in season and
out of season.

We have the richest language that ever a people has accreted, and we use
it as if it were the poorest. We hoard up our infinite wealth of words
between the boards of dictionaries and in speech dole out the worn
bronze coinage of our vocabulary. We are the misers of philological
history. And when we can save our pennies and pass the counterfeit coin
of slang, we are as happy as if we heard a blind beggar thank us for
putting a pewter sixpence into his hat.

I said something of the sort to Judith, after she had resumed her seat
and I had opened the window, the minstrel having wandered to the next
hostelry, where the process of converting "Love's Sweet Dream" into a
nightmare was still faintly audible. Judith looked at me whimsically, as
I stood breathing the comparatively fresh air and enjoying the relative
silence.

"You are still the same, I am glad to see. Conversation with the young
savage from Syria hasn't altered you in the least."

"In the first place," said I, "savages do not grow in Syria; and in the
second, how could she have altered me?"

"If the heavens were to open and the New Jerusalem to appear this moment
before you," retorted Judith, with the relevant irrelevance of her
sex, "you would begin an unconcerned disquisition on the iconography of
angels.