'Who is it?' he asked. 'I always feel so indiscreet and treacherous talking over her private affairs like this with you, though she tells me everything herself. I'm not sure it's the act of a simple, loyal, Christian English gentleman; in fact, I'm pretty certain it's not. I suppose that's why I enjoy it so much.'
'I daresay,' said Anne; 'but she wouldn't mind it.'
'What has been happening?'
'Nothing interesting. Hazel Kerr came here the other day and brought with him a poem in bronze lacquer, as he called it. He read it aloud—the whole of it.'
'Good heavens! Poetry! Do people still do that sort of thing? I thought it had gone out years ago—when I was a young man.'
'Of course, so it has. But Hazel Kerr is out of date. Hyacinth says he's almost a classic.'
'His verses?'
'Oh no! His method. She says he's an interesting survival—he's walked straight out of another age—the nineties, you know. There were poets in those days.'
'Method! He was much too young then to have a style at all, surely!'
'That was the style. It was the right thing to be very young in the nineties. It isn't now.'