"Yes," said Stephen a little shyly, "those two fellows Guy and Denis have had a fit of indigestion I should think; they've been talking about what they call Victorian verse the whole morning. Look, Denis has got his Browning with him still. You don't like poetry, do you?" Stephen blushed a little. It was his first long and direct appeal to the man he had been secretly admiring ever since the previous evening.
"But I do very much indeed!" Lord Henry protested.
Miss Mallowcoid, Leonetta, Denis, and Guy laughed triumphantly at this, and Vanessa, Stephen, Agatha, and Sir Joseph stirred awkwardly.
"We're just four against four,—isn't it funny?" cried Vanessa, jerking Sir Joseph's arm in which hers was locked. "Of course the Tribes are on our side too, but they stayed at Stonechurch shopping."
"So I'm to give the casting vote, am I?" Lord Henry enquired.
"Yes, yes!" exclaimed Vanessa, clapping her hands eagerly, "and you'll give it to us, won't you, Lord Henry! Please!"
Leonetta regarded her schoolmate with grave disapproval, and as she glanced down at her hands, raised her eyebrows in grieved surprise.
"Well," said Denis, "you see, Lord Henry, I've been telling these people about the curious decline in poetry reading, and in the appreciation of poetry, which is noticeable nowadays."
"I confess I never read it," Sir Joseph averred. "I can never make out what the fellow's driving at, turning everything upside down and inside out!"
Vanessa cried "Hear, hear!" and the baronet laughed uproariously.