"The kid can stay up if she will say her piece," said Charlie mockingly. He knew that he could play the autocrat, for that evening at any rate. "What piece?" the child demanded, blushing and defiant. "Her 'Abou Ben Adhem,'" said Charlie. "Do you think I don't know all about that too?" "Oh, mother, you are a bore!" Alicia exclaimed, pouting. "Why did you tell him that?... Well, I'll say it if Hilda will recite something as well." "Me!" murmured Hilda, staggered. "I never recite!" "I've always understood you recite beautifully," said Mrs. Orgreave. "You know you do, Hilda!" said Janet. "Of course you do," said Charlie. "_You've_ never heard me, anyhow!" she replied to him obstinately. How could they have got it fixed into their heads that she was a reciter? This renown was most disconcerting. "Now, Hilda!" Mr. Orgreave soothingly admonished her from the back of the sofa. She turned her head and looked up at him, smiling in her distress. "Go ahead, then, kid! It's agreed," said Charlie. And Alicia galloped through Leigh Hunt's moral poem, which she was preparing for an imminent speech-day, in an extraordinarily short space of time. "But I can't remember anything. I haven't recited for years and years," Hilda pleaded, when the child burst out, "Now, Hilda!" "_Stuff_!" Charlie pronounced. "Some Tennyson?" Mrs. Orgreave suggested. "Don't you know any Tennyson? We must have something, now." And Alicia, exulting in the fact that she had paid the penalty imposed, cried that there could be no drawing back. Hilda was lost. Mrs. Orgreave's tone, with all its softness, was a command. "Tennyson? I've forgotten 'Maud,'" she muttered. "I'll prompt you," said Charlie. "Thomas!" Everybody looked at Tom, expert in literature as well as in music; Tom, the collector, the owner of books and bookcases. Tom went to a bookcase and drew forth a green volume, familiar and sacred throughout all England. "Oh dear!" Hilda moaned. "Where do you mean to begin?" Charlie sternly inquired. "It just happens that I'm reading 'In Memoriam,' myself. I read ten stanzas a day." Hilda bent over the book with him. "But I must stand up," she said, with sudden fire. "I can't recite sitting down." They all cried "Bravo!" and made a circle for her. And she stood up. The utterance of the first lines was a martyrdom for her. But after that she surrendered herself frankly to the mood of the poem and forgot to suffer shame, speaking in a loud, clear, dramatic voice which she accompanied by glances and even by gestures. After about thirty lines she stopped, and, regaining her ordinary senses, perceived that the entire family was staring at her with an extreme intentness. "I can't do any more," she murmured weakly, and dropped on to the sofa. Everybody clapped very heartily. "It's wonderful!" said Janet in a low tone. "I should just say it was!" said Tom seriously, and Hilda was saturated with delicious joy.