'Nothing interesting. Hazel Kerr came here the other day and brought
with him a poem in bronze lacquer, as he called it. He read it
aloud--the whole of it.'

'Good heavens! Poetry! Do people still do that sort of thing? I thought
it had gone out years ago--when I was a young man.'

'Of course, so it has. But Hazel Kerr is out of date. Hyacinth says he's
almost a classic.'

'His verses?'

'Oh no! His method. She says he's an interesting survival--he's walked
straight out of another age--the nineties, you know. There were poets in
those days.'

'Method! He was much too young then to have a style at all, surely!'

'That _was_ the style. It was the right thing to be very young in the
nineties. It isn't now.'

'It's not so easy now, for some of us,' murmured Sir Charles.

'But Hazel keeps it up,' Anne answered.

Sir Charles laughed irritably. 'He keeps it up, does he? But he sits
people out openly, that shows he's not really dangerous. One doesn't
worry about Hazel. It's that young man who arrives when everybody's
going, or goes before anyone else arrives, that's what I'm a little