‘When any lady comes to see Aunt Eliza,’ said Harold, ‘they both talk at once all the time. And yet each of ’em seems to hear what the other one’s saying. I can’t make out how they do it. Grown-up people are so clever!’ ‘The Curate’s the funniest man,’ I remarked. ‘He’s always saying things that have no sense in them at all, and then laughing at them as if they were jokes. Yesterday, when they asked him if he’d have some more tea, he said, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,” and then sniggered all over. I didn’t see anything funny in that. And then somebody asked him about his button-hole, and he said, “’Tis but a little faded flower,” and exploded again. I thought it very stupid.’ ‘O _him_,’ said Edward contemptuously: ‘he can’t help it, you know; it’s a sort of way he’s got. But it’s these girls I can’t make out. If they’ve anything really sensible to talk about, how is it nobody knows what it is? And if they haven’t—and we know they _can’t_ have, naturally—why don’t they shut up their jaw? This old rabbit here—_he_ doesn’t want to talk. He’s got something better to do.’ And Edward aimed a ginger-beer cork at the unruffled beast, who never budged. ‘O but rabbits _do_ talk,’ interposed Harold. ‘I’ve watched them often in their hutch. They put their heads together and their noses go up and down, just like Selina’s and the Vicarage girls’. Only of course I can’t hear what they’re saying.’ ‘Well, if they do,’ said Edward unwillingly, ‘I’ll bet they don’t talk such rot as those girls do!’ Which was ungenerous, as well as unfair; for it had not yet transpired—nor has it to this day—_what_ Selina and her friends talked about. [Illustration] THE ARGONAUTS