“Well, I should have expected it. Young people waste hours on their music now-a-days, but—commend me to a good reader.”
“Then,” said I, laughing, “I really can commend you to Miss Secker, or at any rate, honestly commend her to you; for her reading is neither too fast nor too slow, too loud nor too low; her voice is pleasant and her manner reverent.”
“Ah, I like something earnest.”
“She is earnest too. What a favourite word that is now.”
“Is it? Then I’ll drop it! I hate words that are used up:—suggestive, sensuous, subjective, objective. Bad as Shakspere, taste, and the musical glasses!”
She started up, and was going to take leave, when she stopped short and said—
“What do you think that absurd man, Mr. Hitchin, has done? Painted his cypher on his wheel-barrow!”
“Well,” said I, amused, “I cannot emulate him very closely, as I have no wheel-barrow, but I can put my crest on my watering-pot!”
She laughed rather grudgingly, and said, “I suppose you don’t remember the tax on armorial bearings.”