word, Basil,” cried Mrs. Jericho, with joyous emphasis, “you are quite a poet.”

“Should be very sorry, ma’am, for the respectability of the family,” said Basil.

“Oh, quite a bard,” exclaimed Monica, with a sarcasm so very fine, it was unfelt by its object. “Now, you have given us one sort of female flower, what—dear boy—what is the other?”

“Certainly, Nic,” and Basil took his sister’s hand between his own. “The other flower doesn’t root in the world at all: earth’s too vulgar for it, dearest maid. It’s a flower so fine, it’s grown out of silk or velvet, and stands upon a wire stalk. Whatever scent it has, it isn’t its own: it doesn’t come out of[Pg 37] itself, sweet girl, but out of the fashion. Very fine flowers; very bright, and very sweet, and very wax-like,—but still, my darling virgin, they are flowers, sown in silk, cultivated by the scissors, and perched upon stiffness. Not at all the sort of flower for my button-hole, I can tell you.”

[Pg 37]

“Dear no! Of course not,” cried the wicked Agatha, clapping her hands. “Bessy is, of course, your heart’s-ease.”

“My dear little puss,” said Basil, “I like Bessy, as I said, because she doesn’t think herself too good for other people: for all that, I’m not good enough for her. No, my little tortoise-shell, I shall always study humility, it’s safest—shall always think myself not good enough for any woman in the world. When I die, this is the epitaph I shall have grown over me:—‘He was so humble of spirit, he never lifted his thoughts to marriage. Reader, go and do likewise.’”

“My dear, strange Basil!” said Mrs. Jericho, with an incredulous laugh.

“Shall endeavour to leave five pounds a-year, to have that epitaph grown over me in mustard and cress. Five pounds a-year, ma’am, to the sexton, to keep my memory green.”

“I wonder what Miss Carraways would say if she heard you. But I know better,” said Monica. “I think, Agatha, we had better bespeak our posts as bridesmaids.”

“Wouldn’t suffer it, my darling girls,” said Basil. “If ever I was to marry—not that I ever shall; no, no,—I shall walk through the world with the mustard-and-cress steadily in my eye—you shouldn’t come near my wife. No, no; you’re too good, too fine, too embroidered, for the plain work of matrimony. Bless your little filagree hearts, before you marry you ought to 

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