'Well, Ted, you must know that a man called Wordsworth wrote sonnets, and that is a line out of one of them,' said Alice.
'I'm blessed if ever I could make out why these old buffers of poets want to jaw so much about things. If he didn't know where the boat was going, why didn't he ask at a shipping office, instead of writing a sonnet?'
This reflection, delivered in a wondering, half-aggrieved tone, made Stella laugh more than before. Though Ted could not always very well divine the cause of her clear rippling laughter, no sound was pleasanter to his ears. The elder sister watched the two with an amused interest that was always renewed. It was apparent that the blunt, shrewd way in which the young man so forcibly used his limited outlook on life, formed a kind of attraction to the girl, who had that wide sympathetic range of view which a many-sided culture imparts; who was infected, too, by that dreamy, sceptical attitude of mind born of a nature innately introspective, and early inured to flights in mental dialectics.
'I suppose I ought to go now,' said Ted lingeringly.
'No; stay to dinner and spend the evening with us,' said Alice. 'Oh, it doesn't matter about your clothes. Tom and Cuth seldom dress when we dine en famille in the summer-time.'
'Will you play two-handed euchre with me for sixpenny points if I stay, Stella?'
'Oh, I must play for love.'
Ted coloured with pleasure to the roots of his hair, and Stella hastened to explain.
'You see, it is near the end of the quarter, and I have nothing in my purse but a doubtful threepenny-bit and a damaged stamp.'
CHAPTER IV.