Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/242

 There were other anecdotes, however; not of a parrot character, but chiefly of funny sayings of the little ones at home. Mrs. Judge Robinson, with the artistic mendacity of your true raconteur, accredited to her own four-year-old a speech about the stars being holes in the floor of heaven, although it was said of this gem in "Harper's Drawer," where she had read it, that "the following good one comes to us from a lady subscriber in the well-known city of X—."

It could not be recalled afterwards how, from this harmless exchange, they had come to be listening to passages from the adventurous life of Childe Harold, read crisply by their hostess. Still less could the ladies later comprehend how some of their number had been guilty of innuendos—or worse—against the well-known Bard of Avon. Yet so it was.

Miss Caroline herself had refrained from abusing him—had seemed to have forgotten him, indeed; but as she read Byron to them, their hearts opened to her—rushed out, indeed, with a friendly wholeness that demanded something more than mere cordial applause of her favorite poet. Some intimation of a sympathy with her view of the other poet came to seem not ungraceful. During one of the reader's pauses to impress upon them the splendors of the Byronic imagery, and eke its human heart-warmth, good Aunt Delia, with defiant looks about the circle, broke in with:—

"I shouldn't wonder if Shakspere has been made too much over."