"What shall I read?" she asked.
"Would you read me Matthew Arnold's Scholar-Gypsy?" said the boy.
Mrs. Lewknor looked down at the lad with brilliant eyes.
"Is that your father's favourite?" she asked.
"One of them, 'm. Wordsworth's the one."
There was only one man in the Regiment who possessed a Matthew Arnold, but that man happily was Mrs. Lewknor's husband.
Next day, as the little lady read the familiar lines, Ernie lay with eyes shut, the tears pouring down his face.
"Takes me right back," he said at last as she finished. "I'm not here at all. I'm laying just above the Rabbit-walk over Beech-hangar, with the gorse-pods snapping in the sun, and the beech-leaves stirring beneath me, and old dad with his hat over his eyes and his hands behind his head reciting."
That afternoon Mrs. Lewknor told Mr. Royal, who had dropped in to tea, that she had been reading Matthew Arnold to a man in his company.
Mr. Royal looked blank.