Y. E.: "Nine miles is the greatest distance at which thunder can be heard."
Bob: "TIT-BITS."
The fact is that young Ethel is less an astronomer than a student of current periodical literature. What matters it, after all, however, whence she gleans her general information, if her reading enables her to say—as I once heard her say—with veritable wit, to a girl who was wearing a primrose brooch—
"Blossom and leaves of the primrose are —— Radical."
There are funny men in Parliament who have never said anything much more funny than that.
In her captious mood the witty girl is very terrible. A North Briton has been thus described by her: "A big, lumpy, pale-faced, red-haired, freckled Scotchman," and it was a witty, but captious, girl who said of a certain pianist, a concert given by whom she had attended, "His feet obscured the platform."
A pianist's great feet
The literary appreciations of the witty girl are few. She is apt, in appraising poets, to take them at their weakest rather than at their strongest. She judges Wordsworth by his "Idiot Boy," and she would be capable of passing sentence on Cowper as having cut in his door three holes of different sizes for his tom-cat, his tabby cat and his kitten.
