"_Where R*****, gentlest, kindliest of Beaux, To all the world an urbane presence shows: Proclaims the tropick joys of China Tea, And rules e'en Fashion with his polished sway. At his approach the graceless ruffle shakes, While every waistcoat in its buttons quakes; Each conscious shoe more luminously shines, And puckered breeches haste to smooth their lines_." Whatever the Curtain Rod thought of the subjects, to the Monarch he was always complimental. "Intolerable! unpardonable!" cried the Beau, tapping his snuff-box so fiercely that some of the powder was spilled over the grey Angora cat which was purring against his gold-clocked stockings in the heart of a faded Aubusson rose. Octavia (the cat) sneezed assent. What had upset his equanimity? You shall take a short journey to find out, for I perceive a break in the weather and sweet April is in the West. We will walk just so far as Curtain Garden, but, pray, do not turn into the Maze where the paths are atrociously damp. Alas, the rain is beginning again, but at the end of that long alley is a summer house, the abode of many Rococo Dryads, although 'tis haunted at present by amorous mortals, for I caught the glint of a buckle and a shimmer of chestnut ringlets. It does not require King OEdipus to guess that those eyes which stare so into the heavens are the blue eyes of Phyllida, while any one would recognize in that smooth voice the careful enunciation of Mr. Francis Vernon. He, like every one else that forenoon, was reading _Curtain Polls severely lashed by a Curtain Rod_. Perchance the following lines were they that lately enraged Mr. Horace Ripple: "_Now is it a hoyden, a hussy or Miss, Who listens to love but refuses a kiss? 'Tis said every morning she flies to the Maze, And buries her head from the Publick's low gaze_ _Of Love in a Maze, pretty charmer, beware, For under the rose there are thorns ev'rywhere, And if you should chance the wrong turning to take, 'Tis odds that you'll trip on a tall garden Rake._ _The Cits, when you pass, point you out to their Belles, You serve as a moral all over the Wells, And Dowagers, drinking your health in green tea, Express a faint hope that man will not betray_." "Those are pretty stanzas for a lover to read," said Vernon, who, to do him justice, did not seem very greatly perturbed by the insult. "Oh, Amor," said poor Phyllida, "they can't truly be intended for me!" "For whom else?" "But who would write such cruel words of a young woman?" "That puppy, Lovely." "Mr. Lovely! Oh! no, he's a gentleman and a man of family and a man of taste and a friend of Beau Ripple." "He may be all this and more," declared Vernon, "but he wrote this book." "I don't believe it." "He did, I say, for he informed me so himself--at least he as good as informed me!" "Amor! you must have been mistook."