‘Me!’ ejaculated ’Liza, a delicate, rather indolent girl, in injured innocence. ‘I never spoke about poetry to Oliver Constable.’ ‘And I should just like to hear you try it,’ Mrs. Polley gave her literary daughter fair warning; ‘though a song is all very well at a proper time and place, at a party or after supper. I was a good singer myself in my day—you need not make faces, ’Mily—and I can raise the tune yet in chapel a deal truer than a pack of set-up madams with money wasted on them in an instrument and in piany-forty lessons.’ The last cut bore reference to the superannuated piano in the Polleys’ drawing-room, and the two quarters’ fees for instruction in playing on it, vouchsafed by Mrs. Polley to her daughters, being what they might claim as their due in education according to the growing requirements of their station. ‘But to sing my Maker’s praises is one thing,’ went on Mrs. Polley severely, ‘or even to be able to manage a song or two in addition to a hymn, and to have any traffic with play or poetry books is another. To my mind, they’re worse than novels and romances, and you all know what your deacons think of them. You gals may read them on the sly sometimes, but it had need to be on the sly, for if I get my hands on such devil’s books, into the fire or out of the window they go. Them’s my opinions, and if you think to defy them you know the consequences.’ ‘Compose yourself, my dear,’ ventured Mr. Polley, looking up from his newspaper. ‘I apprehend you’re going just a little too far. I remember the old minister gave in to recommend Uncle Tom’s——’