‘Shade of Shakespeare!’ he cried, ‘do you call that a poem?’
William Henry murmured something in mitigation about its being an acrostic. The old gentleman’s sense of hearing was not acute, and led him to imagine he was being reproached for his surliness. He turned as red as a turkey-cock.
Margaret also flushed to her forehead; she too had misunderstood what her cousin had said, and the more easily because the words she thought he had used (a cross stick) were so appropriate. But how could he, could he, be so foolish as thus to give reins to his temper!
Lastly, Frank Dennis became a brilliant scarlet. He was half suffocated with suppressed laughter. Still, true to his mission of peacemaker, he contrived to splutter out that when a poem was an acrostic, such perfection was not to be looked for as when the muse was unfettered.
‘Oh, that’s it, is it?’ said Mr. Erin grimly. ‘I’ve heard of young men wasting their time, and, what is worse, the time of their employers, in many ways; but that they should take to writing acrostics seems to me the ne plus ultra of human folly. Bah! give me a dish of tea.’
CHAPTER IV.
A REAL ENTHUSIAST.