The poet blushed and began to look uncomfortable.
"Ah! you are reticent. Excuse me; I ought not to probe a poet's soul. Still, I should like to be able to tell my friends—"
"The—the fact is," stammered Mr. Moggridge, "I—I thought of them— in—my bath."
Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys leaned back and laughed—a pretty rippling laugh that shook the diamonds upon her throat. Sam guffawed, and by this action sprang that little rift between the friends that widened before long into a gulf.
"I shall ask you to copy them into my Album. I always victimise a lion when I meet one."
This was said with a glance full of compensation. Mr. Moggridge tried to look very leonine indeed. Across the room another pair of eyes gently reproached him. Never before had he tarried so long from Sophia's side. Poor little heart! beating so painfully beneath your dowdy muslin bodice. It was early yet for you to ache.
"Oh, ah, Dick Cheddar—knew him well," came in the sonorous tones of the Honourable Frederic from the whist-table. "So you were at College with him—first cousin to Lord Stilton—get the title if he only outlives the old man—good fellow, Dick—but drinks."
"Dear me," said the Vicar; "I am sorry to hear that. He was wild at Christchurch, but nothing out of the way. Why, I remember at the Aylesbury Grinds—"
Miss Limpenny, who did not know an Aylesbury Grind from a Bampton Lecture, yet detected an unfamiliar ring in the Vicar's voice.
"He fought a welsher," pursued the Vicar, "just before riding in a race. 'Rollingstone,' his horse was, and Cheddar's eyes closed before the second fence. 'Tom,' he called to me—I was on a mare called Barmaid—"