ld. "Does your head ache?"

"I think the sturgeon is at the bottom of it," was the reply. "I have
not yet recovered fully from the humiliation of having been so
frightened by a sturgeon, when I had been brought up, so to speak, on
the 'Culprit Fay.' I have eaten caviare too," she added
gloomily,--"odious stuff!"

"But, my _dear_ Hilda!" cried Rose, in amused perplexity, "this is too
absurd. Why shouldn't one be frightened at a monstrous creature leaping
out of the water just before one's nose, and how should you know he was
a sturgeon? You couldn't expect him to say 'I am a sturgeon!' or to
carry a placard hung round his neck, with 'Fresh Caviare!' on it."
Hildegarde laughed. "You remind me," added Rose, "that my own ignorance
list is getting pretty long. Get me some sweet-peas, that's a dear; and
I can ask you the things while you are picking them." Hildegarde moved
to the long rows of sweet-peas, which grew near the laburnum bower; and
Rose drew a little brown note-book from her pocket, and laid it open on
the table beside her. "What is 'Marlowe's mighty line'?" she demanded
bravely. "I keep coming across the quotation in different things, and I
don't know who Marlowe was. Yet you see I am cheerful."

"Kit Marlowe!" said Hildegarde. "Poor Kit! he was a great dramatist; the
next greatest after Shakspeare, I think,--at least, well, leaving out
the Greeks, you know. He was a year younger than Shakspeare, and died
when he was only twenty-eight, killed in a tavern brawl."

"Oh, how dreadful!" cried gentle Rose. "Then he had only begun to
write."

"Oh, no!" said Hildegarde. "He had written a great deal,--'Faustus' and
'Edward II.,' and 'Tamburlaine,' and--oh! I don't know all. But one
thing of his _you_ know, 'The Passionate Shepherd,'--'Come live with me
and be my love;' you remember?"

"Oh!" cried Rose. "Did he write that? I love him, then."

"And so many, many lovely things!" continued Hildegarde, warming to her
subject, and snipping sweet-peas vigorously. "Mamma has read me a good
deal here and there,--all of 'Edward II.,' and bits from 'Faustus.'
There is one place, where he sees Helen--oh, I must remember it!--

"'Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?'

Isn't that full of pictures? I see them! I see the ships, and the white,
royal city, and the beautiful, beautiful face looking down from a tower
window."

Both girls were silent a moment; t