“What would be a suitable present for a poet?” asked Miss Langton suddenly.
“Surely a rhyming dictionary,” answered her friend, smiling. “Or a Bradshaw’s Guide to indicate the æsthetic value of common-sense.”
“Don’t be absurd, Mary, I really want your advice. I know a young man in Tercanbury who writes poetry,”
“I never knew a young man who didn’t. You’re not in love with a pale, passionate curate, Bella?”
“I’m in love with no one,” answered Miss Langton, with the shadow of a blush. “At my age it would be ridiculous. But I should like to tell you about this boy. He’s only twenty, and he’s a clerk in the bank there.”
“Bella!” cried Miss Ley, with mock horror. “Don’t tell me you’re philandering with a person who isn’t county. What would the Dean say? And for heaven’s sake take care of poetical boys; at your age a woman should offer daily prayers to her Maker to prevent her from falling in love with a man twenty years younger than herself. That is one of the most prevalent diseases of the day.”
“His father was a linen-draper at Blackstable, who sent him to Regis School, Tercanbury. And there he took every possible scholarship. He was going to Cambridge, but his people died, and to earn his living he was obliged to go into the bank. He’s had a very hard time.”
“But how on earth did you make his acquaintance? No society is so rigidly exclusive as that of a cathedral town, and I know you refuse to be introduced to anyone till you have looked him out in the Landed Gentry.
Miss Ley, singularly unprejudiced, ridiculed her cousin hugely for this veneration of the county family; and though her own name figured in Burke’s portentous she concealed the fact as something rather discreditable. To her mind the only advantage of a respectable ancestry was that with a whole heart she could ridicule the claims of blood.
“He was never introduced to me,” answered Bella unwillingly. “I made friends with him by accident.”