visitor and conducted her into the house. Lavinia found
herself in a small hall, stone paved, with a door on either side. The
hall ran from the front to the back of the house and at the end a door
opened into a wooden latticed porch. Beyond was a picturesque garden and
further still the river shining in the sun. She heard men talking and
apparently disputing. The shrill tones of one voice dominated the rest.

The servant bade her wait in the hall while he went to Mr. Gay. He did
not trouble to ask her name.

While he was gone Lavinia advanced to the open door, drawn thither by
curiosity. A garden grateful to the eye was before her. It had not the
grotesque formality of the Dutch style which came over with William of
Orange--the prim beds with here and there patches and narrow walks of
red, flat bricks, the box trees cut and trimmed in the form of peacocks
with outstretched tails, animals, anything absurd that the designer
fancied. Close to the river bank drooped a willow, and a wide spreading
cedar overspread a portion of the lawn.

Underneath the cedar four men were sitting round a table strewn with
papers. Lavinia easily recognised the portly form of her patron, Gay.
Next to him was a diminutive man, his face overspread by the pallor of
ill-health. He was sitting stiff and bolt upright and upon his head in
place of a fashionable flowing wig was a sort of loose cap.

"That must be Mr. Pope, the queer little gentleman the countryman told
me of," thought Lavinia.

She saw the servant in a deferential attitude standing for some time
between Mr. Pope and Mr. Gay waiting for an opportunity to announce his
errand. For the moment the discussion was too absorbing for anyone of
the four to pay attention to the man.

"Mr. Rich no high opinion has of either music or musicians," said one of
the disputants, a lean, dried-up looking man who spoke with a strong
guttural accent. This was Dr. Pepusch, musical director at John Rich's
theatre, the "Duke's," Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields.

"Dr. Pepusch is right," rejoined Gay. "That is why I favoured Cibber.
But from his reception of me I doubt if he'll take the risk of staging
the play."

"Cibber likes not you, Mr. Gay, and he hates me," said Pope with his
acid smile. "He's a poet--or thinks he's one--and poets love not one
another. Nothing is so blinding to the merits of others as one's own
vanity."

"Nay, Mr. Pope, is not that assumption too sweeping?" put in the fou