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 regret and pity that she felt, Miss Gould had decided that silence was best, and sat back wondering why she suffered him one instant in her parlor. He took from the floor beside him at this point a neat red volume, and, murmuring something about his inability to do the poet justice, he began to read. For one, two, four minutes Miss Gould sat staring; then she interrupted him coldly:

“And who is the author of that doggerel, Mr. Welles?”

“Edward Lear, dear Miss Gould—and a great man, too.”

“I think I might have been spared—” she began with such genuine anger that any but her lodger would have quailed. He, however, merely smiled.

“But the subtlety of it—the immensity of the conception—the power of characterization!” he cried. “Just see how quietly this is treated.”

And to her amazement she let him go on; so that a chance visitor, entering unannounced,