O valiant dead, take comfort where you lie.
So sweet to live? Magnificent to die!
THE LECTURE.
"Francesca," I said, "will you do me—I mean, will you accept a favour from me?"
"If," she said, "your Majesty deigns to grant one there can be no question of my accepting it. It will fall on me and I shall have to submit to it."
"Well," I said, "it's this way. You know I'm going to—a-hem!—deliver a lecture at Faringham next Monday?"
"I gathered," she said, "that you were up to something from the amount of books you were piling up on your writing-table. Besides you've been complaining of the ink a good deal, and that's always a bad sign."
"Hadn't I mentioned Faringham and the lecture?"
"You had distantly alluded to something impending and you had looked at the A.B.C. several times, but it stopped at that."