It seemed to be, rather, a point in good manners--the good manners of
a child `sitting up to table,' not `staring,' not `asking questions,'
and reflecting great credit on its invaluable old nurse. The child sat
happy in the wealth of its inner life; the child was content not to
speak until it were spoken to; but, but, I felt it did want to he
spoken to. And, at length, it was.

So soon as the mutton had been replaced by the apple-pie, Watts-Dunton
leaned forward and `Well, Algernon,' he roared, `how was it on the
Heath to-day?' Swinburne, who had meekly inclined his ear to the
question, now threw back his head, uttering a sound that was like the
cooing of a dove, and forthwith, rapidly, ever so musically, he spoke
to us of his walk; spoke not in the strain of a man who had been
taking his daily exercise on Putney Heath, but rather in that of a
Peri who had at long last been suffered to pass through Paradise. And
rather than that he spoke would I say that he cooingly and flutingly
sang of his experience. The wonders of this morning's wind and sun and
clouds were expressed in a flow of words so right and sentences so
perfectly balanced that they would have seemed pedantic had they not
been clearly as spontaneous as the wordless notes of a bird in song.
The frail, sweet voice rose and fell, lingered, quickened, in all
manner of trills and roulades. That he himself could not hear it,
seemed to me the greatest loss his deafness inflicted on him. One
would have expected this disability to mar the music; but it didn't;
save that now and again a note would come out metallic and over-
shrill, the tones were under good control. The whole manner and method
had certainly a strong element of oddness; but no one incapable of
condemning as unmanly the song of a lark would have called it
affected. I had met young men of whose enunciation Swinburne's now
reminded me. In them the thing had always irritated me very much; and