"If there were anything to read in the house, I wouldn't mind so much," she said, "I mean I wouldn't mind the weather. If it ever leaves off, we might go and try to find 'a select library in connection with Mudie's.'"
"There are heaps of books in the house—I can lend you all the poets."
"I would rather have something to read," she said, "thanks. Do you think if we found one, it would be open oftener than once a week?"
"You mustn't misjudge the town by the theatre," he expostulated; "that the theatre only opens once a week is due to a combination of circumstances that I don't know anything about, but I am sanguine of the shops opening every day."
"How long are you saddled with the place for?" Her tone was sympathetic.
"I'm not sorry I took it," he answered. "Of course everything is more or less a disappointment except the unattainable. When Columbus reached the new world at last, the aborigines said, 'Well, what do you think of Amurrica?' He said, 'I thought it would be bigger.' A bird in the hand is not worth two in the bush; on the contrary, a lark in the sky is worth two in the pudding. If you ever scratched those pretty hands of yours getting a glow-worm out of a hedge, you know that, when you have brought it home, you wondered why you had given yourself so much inconvenience to acquire the little impostor. Possession strains—it depresseth her that gives, and him that takes. While it was in the hedge, the glow-worm shone no less divine than the poet's star."
"Where was that?" she said.
"In a fable. Did you think I meant a star of the music-halls? They weren't the fashion in poetry yet. He was a glorious poet enchanted by a star of the heavens. He stretched his arms to it, he sang to it nightly. And for his sake the star 'stooped earthward, and became a woman.' And then the day came when the woman asked her lover which was best—'The Star's beam, or the Woman's breast':—
"'I miss from heaven,' the man replied,
'A light that drew my spirit to it.'
And to the man the woman sigh'd,
'I miss from earth a poet.'"
"M-m, that's rather sensible," admitted Nina, "I like that—I suppose it can't be really great poetry. What get on my nerves so in the poetry of the Really Great are those irritating words that I knew were coming, like 'porphyry' and 'empyrean,' and 'bower' and 'nymph;' and then there are the titles—they always sound so dull because I never know what they mean. Well, go on talking to me."