It was. "Horace," she said, "would you like to ask him here?"

"No, Lucy, I wouldn't. I don't think it would do."

"But why not—if he's your friend?"

"If he's my friend."

"You said he was your friend. You did, you know." (Another awkward consequence of a cousin's adoration; she is apt to remember and attach importance to your most trivial utterances.)

"Pardon me, I said he was my find."

"Where did you find him?"

"I found him in the City—in a shop."

She smiled at the rhythmic utterance. The tragedy of the revelation was such that it could be expressed only in blank verse.

"The shop doesn't matter."