But as a candid critic, I would ask you if the likeness can be considered correct when you give her no legs? You will see at the ballet that you are in error about women at present, Richard. That admirable institution which our venerable elders have imported from Gallia for the instruction of our gaping youth, will edify and astonish you. I assure you I used, from reading The Pilgrim’s Scrip, to imagine all sorts of things about them, till I was taken there, and learnt that they are very like us after all, and then they ceased to trouble me. Mystery is the great danger to youth, my son! Mystery is woman’s redoubtable weapon, O Richard of the Ordeal! I’m aware that you’ve had your lessons in anatomy, but nothing will persuade you that an anatomical figure means flesh and blood. You can’t realize the fact. Do you intend to publish when you’re in town? It’ll be better not to put your name. Having one’s name to a volume of poems is as bad as to an advertising pill.” “I will send you an early copy, Adrian, when I publish,” quoth Richard. “Hark at that old blackbird, uncle.” “Yes!” Hippias quavered; looking up from the usual subject of his contemplation, and trying to take an interest in him, “fine old fellow!” “What a chuckle he gives out before he flies! Not unlike July nightingales. You know that bird I told you of—the blackbird that had its mate shot, and used to come to sing to old Dame Bakewell’s bird from the tree opposite. A rascal knocked it over the day before yesterday, and the dame says her bird hasn’t sung a note since.” “Extraordinary!” Hippias muttered abstractedly. “I remember the verses.” “But where’s your moral?” interposed the wrathful Adrian. “Where’s constancy rewarded? ‘The ouzel-cock so black of hue, With orange-tawny bill; The rascal with his aim so true; The Poet’s little quill!’ Where’s the moral of that? except that all’s game to the poet! Certainly we have a noble example of the devotedness of the female, who for three entire days refuses to make herself heard, on account of a defunct male. I suppose that’s what Ricky dwells on.” “As you please, my dear Adrian,” says Richard, and points out larch-buds to his uncle, as they ride by the young green wood. The wise youth was driven to extremity. Such a lapse from his pupil’s heroics to this last verge of Arcadian coolness, Adrian could not believe in. “Hark at this old blackbird!” he cried, in his turn, and pretending to interpret his fits of song: “Oh, what a pretty comedy!—Don’t we wear the mask well, my Fiesco?—Genoa will be our own to-morrow!—Only wait until the train has started—jolly! jolly! jolly! We’ll be winners yet! “Not a bad verse—eh, Ricky? my Lucius Junius!” “You do the blackbird well,” said Richard, and looked at him in a manner mildly affable.