the thing on
wheels, of course I know what that is, but isn't there a bird with a
name like that, the larger form of a lorikeet?"

"I fancy it's a lory, with one 'r,'" said Clovis lazily, "in which case
it's no good to you."

Septimus Brope stared in some astonishment.

"How do you mean, no good to me?" he asked, with more than a trace of
uneasiness in his voice.

"Won't rhyme with Florrie," explained Clovis briefly.

Septimus sat upright in his chair, with unmistakable alarm on his face.

"How did you find out? I mean how did you know I was trying to get a
rhyme to Florrie?" he asked sharply.

"I didn't know," said Clovis, "I only guessed. When you wanted to turn
the prosaic lorry of commerce into a feathered poem flitting through
the verdure of a tropical forest, I knew you must be working up a
sonnet, and Florrie was the only female name that suggested itself as
rhyming with lorry."

Septimus still looked uneasy.

"I believe you know more," he said.

Clovis laughed quietly, but said nothing.

"How much do you know?" Septimus asked desperately.

"The yew tree in the garden," said Clovis.

"There! I felt certain I'd dropped it somewhere. But you must have
guessed something before. Look here, you have surprised my secret.
You won't give me away, will you? It is nothing to be ashamed of, but
it wouldn't do for the editor of the CATHEDRAL MONTHLY to go in openly
for that sort of thing, would it?"

"Well, I suppose not," admitted Clovis.

"You see," continued Septimus, "I get quite a decent lot of money out
of it. I could never live in the style I do on what I get as editor of
the CATHEDRAL MONTHLY."

Clovis was even more startled than Septimus had been earlier in the
conversation, but he was better skilled in repressing surprise.

"Do you mean to say you get money out of--Florrie?" he asked.

"Not out of Florrie, as yet," said Septimus; "in fact, I don't mind
saying that I'm having a good deal of trouble over Florrie. But there
are a lot of others."

Clovis's cigarette went out.

"This is VERY interesting," he said slowly. And then, with Septimus
Brope's next words, illumination dawned on him.

"There are heaps of others; for instance:

'Cora with the lips of coral,
You and I will never quarrel.'

That was one of my earliest successes, and it still brings me in
royalties. And then there is--'Esmeralda, when I first beheld her,'
and 'Fair Teresa, how I love to please her,' both