“Well, I don't pretend to understand everything Rossetti has written,” said Christine; “not every single line. But that's my fault, not his. Sometimes he's so very deep. But the sonnet I read to you to-night—it was the one about work and will awaking too late, to gaze upon their life sailed by, Mr. Bacharach—that wasn't the least bit difficult.”
“Well,” Redwood confessed, “I like a poet who talks the English language straight. Shakespeare's good enough for me, and Longfellow. But Chris, here, she goes in for all the modern improvements, especially poetry. One day I found her purse lying on the parlor table. Think, s's I, I'll open it, to put in a little surprise. By George, sir, it was stuffed out to bursting with slips of poetry cut from the newspapers! And then, aestheticism! Oscar-Wildism, I call it. She's caught that, I don't know where; and she's got it bad. Actually, she wanted me to disfigure the hard finish of these walls, here, with one of those new-fangled, aesthetic papers. But the Lord blessed me with some hard sense; and so we manage to keep things pretty much as they air.”
“Air” was Redwood's way of pronouncing “are,” when he wished to be emphatic.
“My father,” observed Christine, “is a deep-dyed conservative, in music, literature, politics, art, and every thing else except costumes. In the matter of costumes, I believe, he's very nearly abreast of the times.”
“Oh, you needn't except costumes,” cried Redwood. “The science of costuming is a branch of archaeology. So that don't count. But look at here, Chris. What you suppose Mr. Bacharach and I have just been talking about? Guess.”
“About—? Oh, I can't guess. I give it up.”
“About you.”
“Me?”
“You.”
“I hope he told you nothing bad about me, Mr. Bacharach.”