_'Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur.'_

'Of course. Indeed, with the gods of Olympus it was quite the other way.
Nothing could be more absurd than their goings on.'

Ida was delighted at her friend's happiness, and was never tired of
hearing about Mr. Jardine's virtues. Love had already begun to exercise a
sobering influence upon Bessie. She no longer romped with the boys, and
she wore gloves. She had become very studious of her appearance, but all
those little coquettish arts of the toilet which she had learned last
autumn at Bournemouth, the cluster of flowers pinned on her shoulder, the
laces and frivolities, were eschewed; lest Mr. Jardine should be reminded
of the wanton-eyed daughters of Zion, with their tinkling ornaments, and
chains, and bracelets, and mufflers, and rings, and nose-jewels. She
began to read with a view to improving her mind, and plodded laboriously
through certain books of the advanced Anglican school which her lover had
told her were good. But she learnt a great deal more from Mr. Jardine's
oral instructions than from any books, and when the Winchester boys came
home for an occasional Sunday they found her brimful of ecclesiastical
knowledge, and at once nicknamed her the Perambulating Rubric, or by the
name of any feminine saint which their limited learning suggested.
Fortunately for Bessie, however, their jests were not unkindly meant, and
they liked Mr. Jardine, whose knowledge of natural history, the ways and
manners of every creature that flew, or walked, or crawled, or swam in
that region of hill and valley, made him respectable in their eyes.

'He's not half a bad fellow--for a parson,' said Horatio,
condescendingly.