"When he doesn't turn over two pages at once," says Dicky Browne. "That is a favorite amusement of his, and it rather makes a mess of the meaning contained in holy writ. He is rather touchy about that last little fiasco of his when reading before the bishop the other day, so I thought I would tell him a story to-day that chimed in deliciously with his own little mistake, and, I doubt not, brought it fresh to his mind."
"What a wicked humor you must have been in," says Portia. "Tell the story to us now."
"You have heard it, I daresay. I only repeated it to Boer in the fond hope he would go away if I did, but it failed me. It was about the fellow who was reading the morning lesson—and he came to the words, 'and he took unto him a wife'—then he turned over two pages by mistake, and went on, 'and he pitched her with pitch within and without!' I don't think Boer liked my little story, but still he wouldn't go away."
"He is a dreadfully prosy person, and very material," says Portia, when they have all laughed a little.
"He is a jolly nuisance," says Mr. Browne.
"He hasn't got much soul, if you mean that," says Roger—
"'A primrose by a river's brim,
A yellow primrose is to him
And it is nothing more.'"
"That is such utter nonsense," says Dulce, tilting her pretty nose and casting a slighting glance at her fiancé from eyes that are
"The greenest of things blue,
The bluest of things gray."
"What more would it be?—a hollyhock, perhaps? or a rhododendron, eh?"