gagements in the
colonies had kept him a little behind the rest of the world in the
matter of poetry, and it did not surprise him in the least that a very
great poet, whose name had never before reached his ears, should be
there beside him in Mrs. Money's drawing-room. He felt delighted and
proud at meeting a poet and a poet's sister.

It so happened that after saying his friendly good night to his
hostess--a ceremony which, even had the rooms been crowded, Mr. Heron
would have thought it highly rude and unbecoming to omit--our fallen
ruler of men found himself in Victoria street with Mr. Blanchet.

"Are you going my way?" Heron asked him with irrepressible sociability.
"I am going up Pall Mall and into Piccadilly, and I shall be glad if you
are coming the same way. Are you going to walk? I always walk when I
can. May I offer you a cigar? I think you will find these good."

Herbert took a cigar, and agreed to walk Heron's way; which was, indeed,
so far as it went, his own. Heron was very proud to walk with a poet.

"Yours is a delightful calling, sir," he said. "Excuse me if I speak of
it. I remember reading somewhere that one should never talk to an author
about his works. But I couldn't help it; we don't meet poets in some of
our colonies; and your sister was kind enough to enlighten my ignorance,
and tell me that you were a poet. I always thought that a charming
anecdote of Wolfe reciting Gray's 'Elegy,' and telling his officers he
would rather have written that than take Quebec. Ay, by Jove, and so
would I!"

Mr. Blanchet had never heard of the anecdote, and had by no means any
clear idea as to the identity or exploits of Wolfe. But he was anxious
to know something about Heron, and therefore he was determined to be as
companionable as possible.

"You must not believe all my sister says about me. She has an
extravagant notion of my merits in every way."

"It must be delightful to have a sister!" Victor Heron said
enthusiastically. "Do you know that I can't imagine any greater
happiness for a man than to have a sister? I envy you, Mr. Blanchet."

Heron was in the peculiar position of one to whom all the family
relationships present themselves in idealized form. He had never had
sister or brother; and a sister now rose up in his imagination as a sort
of creature compounded of a simplified Flora MacIvor and a glorified
Ruth Pinch. His novel-reading in the colonies was a little
old-fashioned, like many of his id