not even with each other.  After his death she was like a watch that had lost its mainspring.”  “Surely,” flashed Lady Constance Leslie, “more like a vessel which had lost her auxiliary screw.”  The main characteristic of both Lady Cork and Lady Constance Leslie’s humour was its lightning speed.  It is superfluous to add, with these quick-witted ladies it was never necessary to explain anything, as it is to the majority of English people; they understood before you had finished saying it.

Many years after, in the late “eighties,” Lady Constance Leslie’s two elder daughters, now Mrs. Crawshay and Lady Hope, developed a singular gift.  They could improvise blank verse indefinitely, and with their father, Sir John Leslie, they acted little mock Shakespearean dramas in their ordinary clothes, and without any scenery or accessories.  Every word was impromptu, and yet the even flow of blank verse never ceased.  I always thought it a singularly clever performance, for Mrs. Crawshay can only have been nineteen then, and her sister eighteen.  Mrs. Crawshay invariably played the heroine, Lady Hope the confidante, and Sir John Leslie any male part requisite.  No matter what the subject given them might be, they would start in blank verse at once.  Let us suppose so unpromising a subject as the collection of railway tickets outside a London terminus had been selected.  Lady Hope, with pleading eyes, and all the conventional gestures of sympathy of a stage confidante, would at once start apostrophising her sister in some such fashion as this:—­

“Fair Semolina, dry those radiant orbs; Thy swain doth beg thee but a token small Of that great love which thou dost bear to him.  Prithee, sweet mistress, take now heart of grace, At times we all credentials have to show, Eftsoons at Willesden halts the panting train, Each traveller knows inexorable fate Hath trapped him in her toils; loud rings the tread Of brass-bound despot as he wends his way From door to door, claiming with gesture rude His pound of flesh, or eke the pasteboard slip, Punched with much care, all travel-worn and stained, For which perchance ten ducats have been paid, Granting full access from some distant spot.  Then trembles he, who reckless loves to sip The joys of travel free of all expense; Knowing the fate that will pursue him, when To stern collector he hath naught to show.”

To which her sister, Mrs. Crawshay, would reply, without one instant’s hesitation, somewhat after this style:—­

    “Sweet Tapioca, firm and faithful friend,
    Thy words have kindled in my guilty breast
    Pangs of remorse; to thee I will confess. 
    Craving a journey to the salt sea waves
    Before this moon had waxed her full, I stood
    Crouching, and feigning infant’s stature small
    Before the wicket, whence the precious slips
    Are issued, and declared my years but ten. 
    Thus did I falsely pretext tender age,
    And claimed but half the wonted price, and now
    Bitter remorse my stricken conscience sears,
    And hot tears flow at my duplicity.”