A blind
beggah had a bwoth-ah, and the bwoth-ah died; now, what welation was--
ah, the blind beggah to the--ah, dead beggah?"

"His sister, of course," said Bessie Dasher, promptly.

"Weally," said Horner, who usually put on most of his _w_ and _r_ ish
airs when in the presence of ladies in evening costume: in the day he
sometimes spoke more plainly. "Weally, how clevah you ah! I asshaw
you, I didn't gwess it for neawy a week--ah!"

"I can quite believe _that_!" said Seraphine, wickedly.

"Did you ever hear any of Praed's charades?" I asked Min.

"No," she said. "Do you recollect some?"

"Ah," put in the vicar, "Praed was a clever fellow; and a true poet,
too."

"Indeed?" said Min. "I have heard his name, but I've never seen
anything that he wrote. Do you recollect any of his charades, Mr
Lorton?" she asked again, turning to me.

"I think I remember one," I said, repeating those three spirited verses
which are well-known, beginning "Come from my First, ay, come!"

"How beautiful the lines are!" said Min; "but it seems a pity that they
should be thrown away on a mere charade."

"That was exactly Praed's way," said the vicar. "I remember well, when
I was a young man at college, what a stir his name made, and what great
things were predicted of him, that he never lived to realise."

"He died young, did he not?" asked Min.

"Yes," said the vicar, "in his thirty-second year. If he had lived, he
would probably have been one of the foremost men in England to-day."

"`Whom the gods love, die young,'" quoted I grandiloquently, like
Mawley.

"True," said the vicar. "There is more philosophy in that, than in most
of those old Pagan beliefs: there is a glimmering of Christianity about
the saying."

"I wonder," said Miss Pimpernell, "whether there is any connection
between it and the text, `Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth'?"

"I can't say, my dear," said the vicar, "if you are right in this
instance; but there is often a great similarity between different parts
of the Bible and the utterances of profane writers."

"Have you ever noticed, sir," said Min, "how David says in the Psalms
that `all the foundations of the world are out of course;' while
Shakespeare makes Hamlet observe that `the world is out of joint'?"

"Yes," said the vicar, "and there are many other parallels that could be
drawn from Shakespeare. He was frequently indebted to the inspired
volume for his reflections; whether wittingly