“You like violets, then?” I asked. “I think you told me you did, though, before.”
“Yes,” she said impulsively, “I love them, I love them, I love them!”
“Ah!” thought I to myself, determining that she should never from henceforth be without an ample supply of violets, if I could help it, “Ah, I wish you would love me!” But, I did not give utterance to the thought, contenting myself with keeping up the conversation respecting the Elegy. “It is generally considered,” said I aloud, “that the best verse of Gray’s is that in which he says—
“‘Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood!’”
“Hullo, Lorton!” shouted out Mr Mawley again close at my back, when I had believed him to be some distance off. “Hullo, Lorton! Don’t you get into heroics, my boy. Does not the ‘noble bard’ make the Prince of Denmark say, that the dust of Alexander the Great might have served to fill the bung of a cask and that—
“‘Imperial Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away!’”
This was too much of a good thing.
I made up my mind to stand his nonsense no longer.
“I wish you would mind your own business,” said I, as rudely as possible, “and keep your ridiculous conversation to yourself; I want none of it; I hate to hear fools prating about things they cannot understand.”
He got quite red in the face; but he kept his temper admirably.