"She plays the piano a good deal."

"It might have been the fiddle," said I.

"She's very fond of Browning."

"It might have been Ibsen," said I.

Mrs. Hilary, seeing that I was determined to look on the bright
side, smiled graciously on me and introduced me to the young
lady. She was decidedly good-looking, fresh and sincere of
aspect, with large inquiring eyes--eyes which I felt would demand
a little too much of me at breakfast--but then a large tea-urn
puts that all right.

"Miss Sophia Milton--Mr. Carter," said Mrs. Hilary, and left us.

Well, we tried the theaters first; but as she had only been to
the Lyceum and I had only been to the Gaioety, we soon got to the
end of that. Then we tried Art: she asked me what I thought of
Degas: I evaded the question by criticizing a drawing of a horse
in last week's Punch--which she hadn't seen. Upon this she
started literature. She said "Some Qualms and a Shiver" was the
book of the season. I put my money on "The Queen of the Quorn."
Dead stop again! And I saw Mrs. Hilary's eye upon me; there was
wrath in her face. Something must be done. A brilliant idea
seized me. I had read that four-fifths of the culture of England
were Conservative. I also was a Conservative. It was four to
one on! I started politics. I could have whooped for joy when I
elicited something particularly incisive about the ignorance of