As a good many of the shallow young producers of our modern poetry were more or less intimately known to his three guests, Arnold suspected the Dean of trying to get back on him for his aspersions on Philip Underwood. He with difficulty restrained himself from saying, gently but aloofly, _a la_ Mrs. Oliver, “I always think it rather a pity to criticize writers who have helped so many people so very greatly as our Georgian poets have,” and said instead, “But the point about this thing of Billy’s is that it’s not modern in the least. It breathes of fifteen years back--the time when people painted in words, and were all for atmosphere. Surely whatever you say about the best modern people, you can’t deny they’re full of thought--so full that sometimes they forget the sound and everything else. Of course you mayn’t _like_ the thought, that’s quite another thing; but you can’t miss it; it fairly jumps out at you.... Did you read John Henderson’s thing in this month’s _English Review_?” This was one of the periodicals not taken in at the Deanery, so the Dean hadn’t read it. Nor did he want to enter into an argument on modern poetry, with which he was less familiar than with the Victorian giants. Arnold, talking too much, as he often did when not talking too little, said across the room to Daphne, “What do _you_ think of John Henderson, Miss Oliver?” It amused him to provoke her, because she was a match for him in rudeness, and drew him too by her attractive face and abrupt speech. She wasn’t dull, though she might care nothing for John Henderson or any other poet, and looked on and yawned when she was bored. “Never thought about him at all,” she said now. “Who is he?” though she knew quite well. Arnold proceeded to tell her, with elaboration and diffuseness. “I can lend you his works, if you’d like,” he added. She said, “No, thanks,” and Mrs. Oliver said, “I’m afraid we don’t find very much time for casual reading here, Mr. Denison,” meaning that she didn’t think John Henderson proper for Daphne, because he was sometimes coarse, and she suspected him of being free-thinking, though as a matter of fact he was ardently and even passionately religious, in a way hardly fit for deaneries. “_I_ don’t read John’s things, you know, Arnold,” put in Jane. “I don’t like them much. He said I’d better not try, as he didn’t suppose I should ever get to like them better.” “That’s John all over,” said Eileen. “He’s so nice and untouchy. Fancy Cecil saying that--except in bitter sarcasm. John’s a dear, so he is. Though he read worse last Tuesday at the Bookshop than I’ve ever heard anyone. You’d think he had a plum in his mouth.”