those two so
indistinguishably blended, as it were, that they would appear as one to
the casual observer. So I practiced repression, though the wall of my
reserve is worn to the thinness of thread-paper, and I tried to keep my
mind on the droning minor canon, and not to look at her, "for that way
madness lies."

SHE

YORK, _June_ 26
High Petersgate Street.

My taste is so bad! I just begin to realize it, and I am feeling my
"growing pains," like Gwendolen in "Daniel Deronda." I admired the
stained glass in the Lincoln Cathedral, especially the Nuremberg window.
I thought Mr. Copley looked pained, but he said nothing. When I went to
my room, I looked in a book and found that all the glass in that
cathedral is very modern and very bad, and the Nuremberg window is the
worst of all. Aunt Celia says she hopes that it will be a warning to me
to read before I speak; but Mr. Copley says no, that the world would lose
more in one way than it would gain in the other. I tried my quotations
this morning, and stuck fast in the middle of the first.

Mr. Copley says that aunt Celia has been feeing the vergers altogether
too much, and I wrote a song about it called "The Ballad of the Vergers
and the Foolish Virgin," which I sang to my guitar. Mr. Copley says it
is cleverer than anything he ever did with his pencil, but of course he
says that only to be agreeable.

We all went to an evening service last night. Coming home, aunt Celia
walked ahead with Mrs. Benedict, who keeps turning up at the most
unexpected moments. She's going to build a Gothicky memorial chapel
somewhere. I don't know for whom, unless it's for Benedict Arnold. I
don't like her in the least, but four is certainly a more comfortable
number than three. I scarcely ever have a moment alone with Mr. Copley;
for go where I will and do what I please, aunt Celia has the most perfect
confidence in my indiscretion, so she is always _en evidence_.

Just as we were turning into the quiet little street where we are lodging
I said, "Oh dear, I wish that I knew something about architecture!"

"If you don't know anything about it, you are certainly responsible for a
good deal of it," said Mr. Copley.

"I? How do you mean?" I asked quite innocently, because I couldn't see
how he could twist such a remark as that