it!"

"The thing I can't understand is why all the world has taken him up
so," said Lena Houghton. "One meets him everywhere, yet nobody
seems to know anything about him. Just because he has taken Ivy
Cottage for four months, and because he seems to be rich and good-
natured, every one is ready to run after him."

"Well, well," said Mrs. O'Reilly, "we all like to be neighbourly, my
dear, and a week ago I should have been ready to say nothing but
good of him. But now my eyes have been opened. I'll tell you just
how it was. We were sitting here, just as you and I are now, at
afternoon tea; the talk had flagged a little, and for the sake of
something to say I made some remark about Bulgaria--not that I
really knew anything about it, you know, for I'm no politician;
still, I knew it was a subject that would make talk just now. My
dear, I assure you I was positively frightened. All in a minute his
face changed, his eyes flashed, he broke into such a torrent of
abuse as I never heard in my life before."

"Do you mean that he abused you?"

"Dear me, no! but Russia and the Czar, and tyranny and despotism,
and many other things I had never heard of. I tried to calm him
down and reason with him, but I might as well have reasoned with the
cockatoo in the window. At last he caught himself up quickly in the
middle of a sentence, strode over to the piano, and began to play as
he generally does, you know, when he comes here. Well, would you
believe it, my dear! instead of improvising or playing operatic airs
as usual, he began to play a stupid little tune which every child