We must describe the young lady, though her charms outdo the powers of the vehicle of prose.  She was tall, slim, and graceful, light of foot as a deer on the corrie.  Her hair was black, save when the sun shone on it and revealed strands of golden brown; it was simply arrayed, and knotted on the whitest and shapeliest neck in Christendom.  Her eyebrows were dark, her eyes large and lucid,

   The greyest of things blue,
   The bluest of things grey.

Her complexion was of a clear pallor, like the white rose beloved by her ancestors; her features were all but classic, with the charm of romance; but what made her unique was her mouth.  It was faintly upturned at the corners, as in archaic Greek art; she had, in the slightest and most gracious degree, what Logan, describing her once, called ’the AEginetan grin.’  This gave her an air peculiarly gay and winsome, brilliant, joyous, and alert.  In brief, to use Chaucer’s phrase,

   She was as wincy as a wanton colt,
   Sweet as a flower, and upright as a bolt.

She was the girl who was teaching the poet the elements of ping-pong.  The poet usually missed the ball, for he was averse to and unapt for anything requiring quickness of eye and dexterity of hand.  On a seat lay open a volume of the Poetry of the Celtic Renascence, which Blake had been reading to Miss Macrae till she used the vulgar phrase ‘footle,’ and invited him to be educated in ping-pong.  Of these circumstances she cheerfully informed the new-comers, adding that Lord Bude had returned happy, having photographed a wild cat in its lair.

‘Did he shoot it?’ asked Blake.

‘No.  He’s a sportsman!’ said Miss Macrae.

‘That is why I supposed he must have shot the cat,’ answered Blake.

‘What is Gaelic for a wild cat, Blake?’ asked Merton unkindly.

Like other modern Celtic poets Mr. Blake was entirely ignorant of the melodious language of his ancestors, though it had often been stated in the literary papers that he was ‘going to begin’ to take lessons.

‘Sans purr,’ answered Blake; ’the Celtic wild cat has not the servile accomplishment of purring.  The words, a little altered, are the motto of the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders.  This is the country of the wild cat.’

‘I thought the “wild cat” was a peculiarly American financial animal,’ said Merton.

Miss Macrae laughed, and, the gong sounding (by electricity, the wire being connected with the Greenwich Observatory), she ran lightly up the central staircase.  Lady Bude had hurried to rejoin her lord; Merton and Blake sauntered out to their rooms in the observatory, Blake with an air of fatigue and languor.

‘Learning ping-pong easily?’ asked Merton.

’I have more hopes of teaching Miss Macrae the essential and intimate elements of Celtic poetry,’ said Blake.  ’One box of books I brought with me, another arrived to-day.  I am about to begin on my Celtic drama of “Con of the Hundred Battles."’