"Yes," said Min, continuing it in her low, sweet voice-- "`By hands unseen, are showers of violets found; The redbreast loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print the ground.'" "You like violets, then?" I asked. "I think you told me you did, though, before." "Yes," she said impulsively, "I love them, I love them, I love them!" "Ah!" thought I to myself, determining that she should never from henceforth be without an ample supply of violets, if I could help it, "Ah, I wish you would love _me_!" But, I did not give utterance to the thought, contenting myself with keeping up the conversation respecting the Elegy. "It is generally considered," said I aloud, "that the best verse of Gray's is that in which he says-- "`Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast, The little tyrant of his fields withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood!'" "Hullo, Lorton!" shouted out Mr Mawley again close at my back, when I had believed him to be some distance off. "Hullo, Lorton! Don't you get into heroics, my boy. Does not the `noble bard' make the Prince of Denmark say, that the dust of Alexander the Great might have served to fill the bung of a cask and that-- "`Imperial Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away!'" This was too much of a good thing. I made up my mind to stand his nonsense no longer. "I wish you would mind your own business," said I, as rudely as possible, "and keep your ridiculous conversation to yourself; I want none of it; I hate to hear fools prating about things they cannot understand." He got quite red in the face; but he kept his temper admirably. "When you are cool again, Lorton," he said to me, with an expression of amiability and mingled pity on his face, that made him look to me like Mephistopheles, "you will, I know, be sorry for what you've said; and when you learn good manners I will be glad to speak to you again!" and, he walked back to the church, with the air of a person who had been deeply injured, but who had yet the magnanimity to forgive if he could not forget--wishing adieu to our little party, of whom none but Min had overheard what I had said, with his usual cordiality, as if nothing had happened to disturb him. "Oh, Frank!" exclaimed Min, when he had got out of sight and we were once more alone, "how could you be so rude and un-courteous--to a clergyman, too! I'm ashamed of you! I am hurt at any friend of mine acting like that!" "But he was so provoking," I stammered, trying to excuse myself. The tone of Min's voice pained me. It was full of grief and reproach: I knew its every intonation. "He's always worrying me and rubbing against me the wrong way!"