umarez, as I hope you do not need to be told, is
the well-known lecturer before women's clubs, and the author of many
sympathetic stories of Nature and animal life of the kind that have
had such a vogue of late. There was always an indefinable air of
pathos about her; as Hunston Wyke put it, one felt, somehow, that her
mother had been of a domineering disposition, and that she took after
her father.

"Ah, dear lady," Mr. Kennaston cried, playfully, "you, like many of
us, have become an alien to Nature in your quest of a mere Earthly
Paradox. Epigrams are all very well, but I fancy there is more
happiness to be derived from a single impulse from a vernal wood than
from a whole problem-play of smart sayings. So few of us are
natural," Mr. Kennaston complained, with a dulcet sigh; "we are too
sophisticated. Our very speech lacks the tang of outdoor life.
Why should we not love Nature--the great mother, who is, I grant you,
the necessity of various useful inventions, in her angry moods, but
who, in her kindly moments--" He paused, with a wry face. "I beg your
pardon," said he, "but I believe I've caught rheumatism lying by that
confounded pond."

Mrs. Saumarez rallied the poet, with a pale smile. "That comes of
communing with Nature," she reminded him; "and it serves you rightly,
for natural communications corrupt good epigrams. I prefer Nature
with wide margins and uncut leaves," she spoke, in her best platform
manner. "Art should be an expurgated edition of Nature, with all
the unpleasant parts left out. And I am sure," Mrs. Saumarez added,
handsomely, and clinching her argument, "that Mr. Kennaston gives us
much better sunsets in his poems than I have ever seen in the west."

He acknowledged this with a bow.

"Not sherry--claret, if you please," said Mr. Jukesbury. "Art should
be an expurgated edition of Nature," he repeated, with a suave
chuckle. "Do you know, I consider that admirably put, Mrs.
Saumarez--admirably, upon my word. Ah, if our latter-day writers would
only take that saying to heart! We do not need to be told of the vice
and corruption prevalent, I am sorry to say, among the very best
people; what we really need is continually to be reminded of the fact
that pure hearts and homes and happy faces are to be found to-day
alike in the palatial residences of the wealthy and in the humbler
homes of those less abundantly favoured by Fortune, and yet dwelling
together in harmony and Christian resignation and--