"Yes, reading."
"Ah! not studying?"
"No; unless Shakspeare is study."
"It is a very hard study, but not the sort which I would have you apply yourself to. What were you reading?"
"'As You Like It,'" said Hoffland; "and I was really charmed with the fair Rosalind."
"Yes," said Mowbray indifferently; "a wonderful character, such as Shakspeare only could draw."
"And as good as she was wild—as maidenly as she was pure."
Mowbray shook his head.
"That foray she made into the woods en cavalier was a very doubtful thing," he said.
"Why, pray?" Hoffland asked, pouting. "I should like to know what there was wrong in it."