Peggy looked at him in a sort of comic despair.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she said.
“Because you never thought of it before,” said he. “Oh, I know what I mean quite well! Do say it for me, Mrs. Allbutt,” he said, turning to her.
She smiled at him.
“Do you know the thing called the Æolian harp?” she said. “It is a matter of a few strings, and you put it up in a tree, and whatever happens, whether it blows a gale or whether the sun shines or whether it is frosty, the Æolian harp, as I imagine it, always responds and makes music of some kind.”
“Oh, but the Æolian harp—” began Peggy.
“Dear, this is a peculiar sort of Æolian harp. The ordinary one only makes sound when the wind blows, but I imagine one which turns everything into song. It is the romanticist, the dreamer. It is neither moral nor immoral; it is only exquisitely sensitive, not only in matters of the heart, in sympathy, in kindness, but in intellectual things.”
Hugh laughed.
“Oh, how nice it sounds!” he cried. “Do let us all go and be Æolian harps!”
Then, with one of his quick eager movements, he turned to Peggy.