“How pretty! This is mother’s own design for the title-page! And oh—how capital! Dr. Medlicott’s sketch of the mud baths, with Jock shrinking into a corner out of the way of the fat Grafin! You have everything. Here is Armine’s Easter hymn!”
“I wished to commemorate the whole range of feeling,” said Fordham.
“I see; you have even picked out the least ridiculous chapter of Jotapata. I wish some one had sketched you patiently listening to the nineteen copy-books. It would have been a monument of good nature. And here is actually Sydney’s poem about wishing to have been born in the twelfth century:—”
“Would that I lived in time of faith,
When parable was life,
When the red cross in Holy Land
Led on the glorious strife.
Oh! for the days of golden spurs,
Of tournament and tilt,
Of pilgrim vow, and prowess high,
When minsters fair were built;
When holy priest the tonsure wore,
The friar had his cord,
And honour, truth, and loyalty
Edged each bold warrior’s sword.”
“The solitary poetical composition of our family,” said Fordham, “chiefly memorable, I fear, for the continuation it elicited.”
“Would that I lived in days of yore,
When outlaws bold were rife,
The days of dagger and of bowl,
Of dungeon and of strife.
Oh! for the days when forks were not,
On skewers came the meat;
When from one trencher ate three foes:
Oh! but those times were sweet!
When hooded hawks sat overhead,
And underfoot was straw
Where hounds and beggars fought for bones
Alternately to gnaw.”
“That was Jock’s, I believe. How furious it did make us. Good old Sydney, she has lived in her romance ever since.”
“Wisely or unwisely.”
“Can it be unwisely, when it is so pure and bright as hers, and gives such a zest to common things?”
“Glamour sometimes is perplexing.”