This was one of the periodicals not taken in at the Deanery, so the Dean hadn’t read it. Nor did he want to enter into an argument on modern poetry, with which he was less familiar than with the Victorian giants.
Arnold, talking too much, as he often did when not talking too little, said across the room to Daphne, “What do you think of John Henderson, Miss Oliver?”
It amused him to provoke her, because she was a match for him in rudeness, and drew him too by her attractive face and abrupt speech. She wasn’t dull, though she might care nothing for John Henderson or any other poet, and looked on and yawned when she was bored.
“Never thought about him at all,” she said now. “Who is he?” though she knew quite well.
Arnold proceeded to tell her, with elaboration and diffuseness.
“I can lend you his works, if you’d like,” he added.
She said, “No, thanks,” and Mrs. Oliver said, “I’m afraid we don’t find very much time for casual reading here, Mr. Denison,” meaning that she didn’t think John Henderson proper for Daphne, because he was sometimes coarse, and she suspected him of being free-thinking, though as a matter of fact he was ardently and even passionately religious, in a way hardly fit for deaneries.
“I don’t read John’s things, you know, Arnold,” put in Jane. “I don’t like them much. He said I’d better not try, as he didn’t suppose I should ever get to like them better.”
“That’s John all over,” said Eileen. “He’s so nice and untouchy. Fancy Cecil saying that—except in bitter sarcasm. John’s a dear, so he is. Though he read worse last Tuesday at the Bookshop than I’ve ever heard anyone. You’d think he had a plum in his mouth.”
Obviously these young people were much interested in poets and poetry. So Mrs. Oliver said, “On the last night of the year, the Dean usually reads us some poetry, just before the clock strikes. Very often he reads Tennyson’s ‘Ring out, wild bells.’ It is an old family custom of ours,” she added, and they all said what a good one, and how nice it would be. Then Mrs. Oliver told them that they weren’t to dress for dinner, because there was evensong afterwards in the Cathedral, on account of New Year’s Eve.