His rooms were over a toy-shop in Piccadilly, in such a roar of sounds that the ladies exclaimed, and Arthur asked him how much he paid for noise.
‘It is worth having,’ said Percy; ‘it is cheerful.’
‘Do you think so?’ exclaimed Violet. ‘I think carriages, especially late at night, make a most dismal dreary sound.’
‘They remind me of an essay of Miss Talbot’s where she speaks of her companions hastening home from the feast of empty shells,’ said Theodora.
‘Ay! those are your West-end carriages,’ said Percy; ‘I will allow them a dreary dissatisfied sound. Now mine are honest, business-like market-waggons, or hearty tradesfolk coming home in cabs from treating their children to the play. There is sense in those! I go to sleep thinking what drops of various natures make up the roar of that great human cataract, and wake up dreaming of the Rhine falls.
“Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows down the vale of Cheapside.”
Eh, Mrs. Martindale?’
Violet, who always received a quotation of Wordsworth as a compliment to the north, smiled and answered, ‘I am afraid with me it would end in,
“The stream will not flow, the hill will not rise.”’
‘Pish, Violet,’ said her husband, ‘how can you expect to feel like poets and lovers? And halloo! he is coming it strong! “Poems by A.”; “The White Hind and other Poems”; “Gwyneth: a tale in verse”; “Farewell to Pausilippo”, by the Earl of St. Erme. Well done, Percy! Are you collecting original serenades for Theodora? I’ll never betray where they came from.’