Her room was a long white attic, one end curtained off. There was a window in the gable facing west, and in the window a table overflowing with manuscripts and books; sheets of foolscap covered with her graceful writing, an Old English text, a Latin grammar, a treatise on court hand. She was trying to make up for a haphazard education by teaching herself. As she passed on her way to the cupboard, she drew a sheet of paper out of the muddle and presented it to Denis.
"Now you can just look through that while I'm making the tea, and see if there are any mistakes," she enjoined him in the minute expressive voice which was one of her charms to those who found her charming. Denis found himself faced by a Latin exercise. When he had learned all his cousin could tell him about the wreaths and the roses that adorned the girls and the queens, he turned the page, and came on something more attractive. In her hours of ease Lettice was a poet. Looking up from her task with the bread knife, she saw what he was doing, turned a deep pink, and silently but swiftly removed the sheet from the fingers. Denis laughed.
"Haven't you anything to show?"
"No, I haven't," said Lettice, acerb and forbidding.
"'Sheep on a lonely road,
Gray in the gray—'"
Denis quoted maliciously. The poet covered her ears with her hands.
"Oh, do-o-on't!"
"Well, let me see the rest of it!"