The latter had been for some time turning over the leaves of her book with a rapidity that denoted either impatience or dire disappointment in its contents.
At intervals she would stop, read a few lines, and then sweep onward—as if in search of something better.
This exercise ended, at length, by her dashing the volume down upon the shingle, and exclaiming:
“Stuff!”
“Who?”
“Tennyson.”
“Surely you’re jesting? The divine Tennyson—the pet poet of the age?”
“Poet of the age! There’s no such person!”
“What! not Longfellow?”
“Another of the same. The American edition, diluted, if such a thing were possible. Poets indeed! Rhymesters of quaint conceits—spinners of small sentiments in long hexameters—not soul enough in all the scribblings of both to stir up the millionth part of an emotion?”