Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/320

 of herself and the tall chap, that Miss Newman was talking about.’

‘Why, of course, Julius; who cares about age, except as it affects muscle?’ said Lesbia. ‘But now, Mr Leckinsopp, I want to know what it was that made the rose i’ the bud feed on your damask cheek just now.’

‘I—a—I’m rather amused to hear such expressions from a young lady as you made use of just now about the sun,’ he answered sheepishly.

‘Well, it’s the sun’s fault,’ retorted Lesbia; ‘what made the lumbering old thing get in my way? But, Fri, my girl, what makes you take the part of the stupid new style? There’s nothing to be said for it.’

‘Nothing,’ assented Mr Bristley. ‘Or, at any rate, so very little, that it was, in my opinion, a huge blunder to make the change. Let us have scientific truth in wholeness and consistency on a grand scale; that no rational man will gainsay. But do not let us spoil the beauty and homeliness of the old merely to make way for a shallow thing of shreds and patches. The poetry of the seasons has been quite destroyed by the silly innovation. May—the month of Mary—has been doubly dislocated. It now begins and ends twelve days too soon; it begins before the trees have had time to put on their first young green, or the cowslips to flower, and it ends just as everything is getting into full bloom, but yet is not far enough advanced to proclaim leafy June. Again, Christmas now comes before the lengthening of the day is sufficiently apparent to give one the feeling of having left the dark time behind, and generally before the frost and snow have had a chance. Easter, being a moveable festivity, is not affected; but Michaelmas and the goose-fair come before autumn shows on the boughs, and before the birds have had time to get into condition. For sportsman now the 12th of August and the 1st of