at I'm reading 'In Memoriam,' myself. I read ten stanzas a day."

Hilda bent over the book with him.

"But I must stand up," she said, with sudden fire. "I can't recite
sitting down."

They all cried "Bravo!" and made a circle for her. And she stood up.

The utterance of the first lines was a martyrdom for her. But after that
she surrendered herself frankly to the mood of the poem and forgot to
suffer shame, speaking in a loud, clear, dramatic voice which she
accompanied by glances and even by gestures. After about thirty lines
she stopped, and, regaining her ordinary senses, perceived that the
entire family was staring at her with an extreme intentness.

"I can't do any more," she murmured weakly, and dropped on to the sofa.

Everybody clapped very heartily.

"It's wonderful!" said Janet in a low tone.

"I should just say it was!" said Tom seriously, and Hilda was saturated
with delicious joy.

"You ought to go on the stage; that's what you ought to do!" said
Charlie.

For a fraction of a second, Hilda dreamt of the stage, and then Mrs.
Orgreave said softly, like a mother:

"I'm quite sure Hilda would never dream of any such thing!"

IV

There was an irruption of Jimmie and Johnnie, and three of the Swetnam
brothers, including him known as the Ineffable. Jimmie and Johnnie
played the role of the absolutely imperturbable with a skill equal to
Charlie's own; and only a series of calm "How-do's?" marked the
greetings of these relatives. The Swetnams were more rollickingly
demonstrative. Now that the drawing-room was quite thickly populated,
Hilda, made nervous by Mr. Orgreave's jocular insinuation that she
herself was the object of the Swetnams' call, took refuge, first with
Janet, and then, as Janet was drawn into the general crowd, with
Charlie, who was absently turning over the pages of "In Memoriam."

"Know this?" he inquired, friendly, indicating the poem.

"I don't," she said. "It's splendid, isn't it?"

"Well," he answered. "It's rather on the religious tack, you know.
That's why I'm reading it." He smiled oddly.

"Really?"

He hesitated, and then nodded. It was the strangest avowal from this
young dandy of twenty-three with the airy and cynical tongue. Hilda
thought: "Here, then, is another!" And her own most secret troubles
recurred to her mind.

"What's that about Teddy Clayhanger?" Charlie cried out, suddenly
looking up. He had caught the name in a distant conversation.

Janet explai