"Oh yes, we will permit you. Papa has always wanted to know you, and so have I since--If you are allowed to come: but perhaps you will not be allowed to come, Lord Erradeen." "Will not be _allowed_? What does that mean? and since when, may I ask, have you been so kind as to want to know me? I wish I had been aware." "Since----well, of course, since you were Lord Erradeen," said the girl, "we did not know of you before: and people like us who have nothing but money are always very fond of knowing a lord--everybody says so at least. And it is true, in a way. Papa likes it very much indeed. He likes to say my friend, the Earl of ----, or my friend, the Duke of ----. He knows a great many lords, though perhaps you would not think it. He is very popular with fine people. They say he is not at all vulgar considering, and never takes anything upon him. Oh, yes, I know it all very well. I am a new person in the other way--I believe it is far more what you call snobbish--but I can't bear the fine people. Of course they are very nice to me; but I always remember that they think I am not vulgar considering, and that I never pretend to be better than I am." There was something in this address spoken with a little heat, which touched Walter's sense of humour, a faculty which in his better moods made his own position, with all its incongruities, ruefully amusing to him. "I wonder," he said, "if I pretend to be better than I am? But then I should require in the first place to know what I am more distinctly than I do. Now you, on that important point, have, I presume, no doubt or difficulty?----" "Not the least," she said, interrupting him. "The daughter of a rich Glasgow man who is nobody--that is what I am--everybody knows; but you, my lord, you are a noble person of one of the oldest families, with the best blood in your veins, with----" She had been eyeing him somewhat antagonistically, but here she broke off, and fell a laughing. "I don't believe you care a bit about it," she said. "Are you going with us to the theatre to see the _Falcon_, Lord Erradeen?" "What is the _Falcon_?" he said. "You have not seen it nor heard of it? It is Mr. Tennyson's," said Katie with a little awe. "How is it possible you have not heard? Don't you know that lovely story? It is a poor gentleman who has nothing but a falcon, and the lady he loves comes to see him. She is a widow (that takes away the interest a little, but it is beautiful all the same) with a sick child. When he sees her coming he has to prepare an entertainment for her, and there is nothing but his falcon, so he sacrifices it, though it breaks his heart. And oh, to see the terrible stage bird that is brought in, as if that could be his grand hawk! You feel so angry, you are forced to laugh till you cry again. That kind of story should never be brought to the literal, do you think it should?" "And what happens?" said Walter, young enough to be interested, though not sufficiently well-read to know.