"I thought I saw my late espoused wife Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,"-- and the bits about Satan in _Paradise Lost_. The sound of the lines gave her the same nice feeling that she had when Mrs. Propart played the March in Scipio after Evening Service. She tried to make lines of her own that went the same way as the lines in Milton and Shakespeare and Pope's _Iliad_. She found out that there was nothing she liked so much as making these lines. It was nicer even than playing the Hungarian March. She thought it was funny that the lines like Pope's _Iliad_ came easiest, though they had to rhyme. "Silent he wandered by the sounding sea," was good, but the Greek line that Mark showed her went: "Be d'akeon para thina poluphloisboio thalasses"; that was better. "Don't you think so, Mark?" "Clever Minx. Much better." "Mark--if God knew how happy I am writing poetry he'd make the earth open and swallow me up." Mark only said, "You mustn't say that to Mamma. Play 'Violetta.'" Of all hateful and disgusting tunes the most disgusting and the most hateful was "Violetta," which Mr. Sippett's sister taught her. But if Mark would promise to make Mamma let her learn Greek she would play it to him twenty times running. When Mark went to Chelmsted that autumn he left her his brown _Greek Accidence_ and Smith's _Classical Dictionary_, besides Macaulay's _Lays of Ancient Rome_. She taught herself Greek in the hour after breakfast before Miss Sippett came to give her her music lesson. She was always careful to leave the Accidence open where Miss Sippett could see it and realise that she was not a stupid little girl. But whether Miss Sippett saw the Accidence or not she always behaved as if it wasn't there. III. When Mamma saw the Accidence open on the drawing-room table she shut it and told you to put it in its proper place. If you talked about it her mouth buttoned up tight, and her eyes blinked, and she began tapping with her foot. There was something queer about learning Greek. Mamma did not actually forbid it; but she said it must not be done in lesson time or sewing time, or when people could see you doing it, lest they should think you were showing off. You could see that she didn't believe you _could_ learn Greek and that she wouldn't like it if you did. But when lessons were over she let you read Shakespeare or Pope's _Iliad_ aloud to her while she sewed. And when you could say: "Lars Porsena of Clusium By the nine Gods he swore"--