the Artistic Temperament) he was a normal boy, what he said was:

"Stunning! Isn't it!" while he stood still, waiting, for the hidden
artist to favour them with another flourish of that gay string of
jewels. "He's 'recapturing' it all right, eh?"

The much-quoted quotation passed by Tishy as the idle wind. Even had
she recognised the allusion, she would have considered the
professional raptures of a blackbird a rather dull subject of
conversation. The gallants of Cluhir did not deal in such matters in
_tête à tête_ with her, and she thought, as she had thought at
the children's party, long ago, that Larry, if not quite a bore,
might, in spite of Coppinger's Court, rather easily become one.

"Oh, he's stunning enough!" she replied, with her full-throated,
contralto laugh; "It must be his first cousin we have in the garden
behind Number Six! Dad says he doesn't know, does him or me sing the
loudest!"

By Jove! She sings! thought Larry (as he was meant to think). Of
course! What a fool he was to have forgotten it! And as, at this
period of his career, of the three arts, who were always riding a pace
in his soul, Music, Painting, and Literature, Music happened to be the
leading horse, Larry looked upon Tishy with eyes in which a new ardour
had awakened, and proceeded with his accustomed speed to mature the
details of the concert upon which he had, during the last sixty
seconds, enthusiastically decided.

Old Mrs. Cantwell, although unpromising of aspect, was by no means as
deplorable, socially, as Christian had assumed her to be. The fact