"Well, well, I suppose all the musical genius of the family is centred in your charming sister. What a player! What a touch—or rather what a pull!"
"Humph! yes, not bad."
"So much feeling! Feeling is the thing, sir. It is soul, passion, poetry. Feeling's the chap for me! A poet, sir?"
"No."
"You look like one."
"No; I am merely a dabbler. I follow in the wake of intellectual men. I have some humour. My friends think me a sort of 'Boz'—that certainly is my line. But I have no pretensions."
"Have you written much?"
"A good deal. I have written for 'Blackwood.'"
"Indeed!"
"Yes; but they never printed what I sent them. I don't know why. Perhaps, because I am not a Scotchman. They are very jealous of English writers. Had I been a Scotchman they would have jumped at my papers; so my friends tell me."