time, too, has come for me!"

After a few moments the minstrel resumed lightly and cheerily,--

"Sir, your turn: pray have you long known--judging by our former
conversation you cannot have long loved--the lady whom you have wooed
and won?"

As Kenelm had neither as yet wooed nor won the lady in question, and
did not deem it necessary to enter into any details on the subject of
love particular to himself, he replied by a general observation,--

"It seems to me that the coming of love is like the coming of spring:
the date is not to be reckoned by the calendar. It may be slow and
gradual; it may be quick and sudden. But in the morning, when we wake
and recognize a change in the world without, verdure on the trees,
blossoms on the sward, warmth in the sunshine, music in the air, then
we say Spring has come!"

"I like your illustration. And if it be an idle question to ask a
lover how long he has known the beloved one, so it is almost as idle
to ask if she be not beautiful. He cannot but see in her face the
beauty she has given to the world without."

"True; and that thought is poetic enough to make me remind you that I
favoured you with the maiden specimen of my verse-making on condition
that you repaid me by a specimen of your own practical skill in the
art. And I claim the right to suggest the theme. Let it be--"

"Of a beefsteak?"