anything that is to be believed! So I shall well understand
you,--that is, you are a very great scholar,--but that it pleases you to
pretend you are a dunce!"

Lorimer's face brightened into a very gentle and winning softness as he
looked at her.

"I assure you, Miss Gueldmar, I am not pretending in the least. I'm no
scholar. Errington is, if you like! If it hadn't been for him, I should
never have learned anything at Oxford at all. He used to leap over a
difficulty while I was looking at it. Phil, don't interrupt me,--you
know you did! I tell you he's up to everything: Greek, Latin, and all
the rest of it,--and, what's more, he writes well,--I believe,--though
he'll never forgive me for mentioning it,--that he has even published
some poems."

"Be quiet, George!" exclaimed Errington, with a vexed laugh. "You are
boring Miss Gueldmar to death!"

"What is _boring_?" asked Thelma gently, and then turning her eyes full
on the young Baronet, she added, "I like to hear that you will pass your
days sometimes without shooting the birds and killing the fish; it can
hurt nobody for you to write." And she smiled that dreamy pensive smile,
of hers that was so infinitely bewitching. "You must show me all your
sweet poems!"

Errington colored hotly. "They are all nonsense, Miss Gueldmar," he said
quickly. "There's nothing 'sweet' about them, I tell you frankly! All
rubbish, every line of them!"

"Then you should not write them," said Thelma quietly. "It is only a
pity and a disappointment."

"I wish every one were of your opinion," laughed Lorimer, "it would
spare us a lot of indifferent verse."

"Ah! you have the chief Skald of all the world in your land!" cried
Gueldmar, bringing his fist down with a jovial thump on the table. "He
can teach you all that you need to know."

"_Skald_?" queried Lorimer dubiously. "Oh, you mean bard. I suppose you
allude to Shakespeare?"

"I do," said the old _bonde_ enthusiastically, "he is the only glory of
your country I envy! I would give anything to prove him a Norwegian. By
Valhalla! had he but been one of the Bards of Odin, the world might have
followed the grand old creed still! If anything could ever persuade me
to be a Christian, it would be the fact that Shakespeare was one. If
England's name is rendered imperishable, it will be through the fame of
Shakespeare alone,--just as we have a kind of tenderness for degraded
modern Greece, because of Homer. Ay, ay! countries and nation