Elsley Vavasour is sitting one morning in his study, every comfort of which is of Lucia’s arrangement and invention, beating the home-preserve of his brains for pretty thoughts.  On he struggles through that wild, and too luxuriant cover; now brought up by a “lawyer,” now stumbling over a root, now bogged in a green spring, now flushing a stray covey of birds of Paradise, now a sphinx, chimsera, strix, lamia, fire-drake, flying-donkey, two-headed eagle (Austrian, as will appear shortly), or other portent only to be seen now-a-days in the recesses of that enchanted forest, the convolutions of a poet’s brain.  Up they whir and rattle, making, like most game, more noise than they are worth.  Some get back, some dodge among the trees; the fair shots are few and far between:  but Elsley blazes away right and left with trusty quill; and, to do him justice, seldom misses his aim, for practice has made him a sure and quick marksman in his own line.  Moreover, all is game which gets up to-day; for he is shooting for the kitchen, or rather for the London market, as many a noble sportsman does now-a-days, and thinks no shame.  His new volume of poems ("The Wreck” included) is in the press:  but behold, it is not as long as the publisher thinks fit, and Messrs. Brown and Younger have written down to entreat in haste for some four hundred lines more, on any subject which Mr. Vavasour may choose.  And therefore is Elsley beating his home covers, heavily shot over though they have been already this season, in hopes that a few head of his own game may still be left:  or in default (for human nature is the same, in poets and in sportsmen), that a few head may have strayed in out of his neighbours’ manors.

At last the sport slackens; for the sportsman is getting tired, and hungry also, to carry on the metaphor; for he has seen the postman come up the front walk a quarter of an hour since, and the letters have not been brought in yet.

At last there is a knock at the door, which he answers by a somewhat testy “come in.”  But he checks the coming grumble, when not the maid, but Lucia enters.

Why not grumble at Lucia?  He has done so many a time.

Because she looks this morning so charming; really quite pretty again, so radiant is her face with smiles.  And because, also, she holds triumphant above her head a newspaper.

She dances up to him—­

“I have something for you.”

“For me?  Why, the post has been in this half-hour.”

“Yes, for you, and that’s just the reason why I kept it myself.  D’ye understand my Irish reasoning?”

“No, you pretty creature,” said Elsley, who saw that whatever the news was, it was good news.

“Pretty creature, am I?  I was once, I know; but I thought you had forgotten all about that.  But I was not going to let you have the paper till I had devoured every word of it myself first.”

“Every word of what?”

“Of what you shan’t have unless you promise to be good for a week.  Such a Review; and from America!  What a dear man he must be who wrote it!  I really think I should kiss him if I met him.”