"JULIA is coming to-day," says Dulce, looking at them all, with the tea-pot poised in her hand. It is evident that this sudden announcement has hitherto been forgotten. "I heard from her this morning," she says, half apologetically, "but never thought of telling you until now. She will be here in time for dinner, and she is bringing the children with her." "Only the children?" says Roger, the others are all singularly dumb. "Yes. The _ayah_ has gone home. Of course she will bring a nurse of some sort, but not Singa." "For even small mercies we should be thankful," says Roger. "Who is Julia?" asks Portia, idly. "'Who is Julia? What is she That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she, The heavens such grace----'" "Oh, that will do," says Dicky Browne, turning impatiently to Roger, who has just delivered himself of the above stanza. "Don't be severe," says Dulce, reprovingly; "extravagant praise is always false, and as to the swains, that is what she _wants_ them to do, only they won't." "Now, who is severe?" says Roger triumphantly. "As yet, you have hardly described her," says Portia. "Let me do it," entreats Mr. Browne, airily, "I feel in the very vein for that sort of thing. She is quite a thing to dream of; and she is much too preciously utter, and quite too awfully too-too!" "That's obsolete now," says Dulce, "quite out of the market altogether. Too-too has been superseded, you should tell Portia she is very-very!" "Odious," says Roger, in a careful aside as though determined to think Miss Blount's speech unfinished. "She is like Barbauld's _Spring_," put in Sir Mark, lazily, coming up to have his cup refilled. "She is the 'sweet daughter of a rough and stormy sire.' Do any of you remember old Charley Blount?" Plainly, nobody does. Everybody looks at everybody else, as though _they_ should have known him, but nothing comes of it. "Well, he was just the funniest old thing," says Sir Mark, laughing, at some absurd recollection. "Well, he is gone now, and 'I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat And the breeches, and all that, _Were_ so queer.' "And bless me, what a temper he had," says Sir Mark, laughing again at his quotation. "His clothes and his temper were old Blount's principal features. Hideous old monster he was too." "Is she hideous?" ask Portia. "N-o. She is well enough; she isn't a bit like him, if we forget the clothes and temper. She says her mother was very beautiful." "I never knew a woman whose mother wasn't beautiful, once the mother was dead," says Roger. "Sort of thing they tell you the moment they get the chance."