With their love of literature, it was natural also that the young men should at such times not only talk about books, but occasionally read for their entertainment from some favourite one; so that now, for the first time in their lives, the young ladies were brought under direct teaching of a worthy sort--they had had but a mockery of it at school and church--and a little light began to soak through their unseeking eyes. Among many others, however, less manifest, one obstruction to their progress lay in the fact that Christina, whose perceptions in some directions was quick enough, would always make a dart at the comical side of anything that could be comically turned, so disturbing upon occasion the whole spiritual atmosphere about some delicate epiphany: this to both Alister and Ian was unbearable. She offended chiefly in respect of Wordsworth--who had not humour enough always to perceive what seriously meant expression might suggest a ludicrous idea. One time, reading from the Excursion, Ian came to the verse--not to be found, I think, in later editions-- "Perhaps it is not he but some one else":-- "Awful idea!" exclaimed Christina, with sepulchral tone; "--'some one else!' Think of it! It makes me shudder! Who might it not have been!" Ian closed the book, and persistently refused to read more that day. Another time he was reading, in illustration of something, Wordsworth's poem, "To a Skylark," the earlier of the two with that title: when he came to the unfortunate line,-- "Happy, happy liver!"-- "Oh, I am glad to know that!" cried Christina. "I always thought the poor lark must have a bad digestion--he was up so early!" Ian refused to finish the poem, although Mercy begged hard. The next time they came, he proposed to "read something in Miss Palmer's style," and taking up a volume of Hood, and avoiding both his serious and the best of his comic poems, turned to two or three of the worst he could find. After these he read a vulgar rime about an execution, pretending to be largely amused, making flat jokes of his own, and sometimes explaining elaborately where was no occasion. "Ian!" said his mother at length; "have you bid farewell to your senses?" "No, mother," he answered; "what I am doing is the merest consequence of the way you brought us up." "I don't understand that!" she returned. "You always taught us to do the best we could for our visitors. So when I fail to interest them, I try to amuse them." "But you need not make a fool of yourself!" "It is better to make a fool of myself, than let Miss Palmer make a fool of--a great man!" "Mr. Ian," said Christina, "it is not of yourself but of me you have been making a fool.--I deserved it!" she added, and burst into tears. "Miss Palmer," said Ian, "I will drop my foolishness, if you will drop your fun." "I will," answered Christina. And Ian read them the poem beginning-- "Three years she grew in sun and shower."