“For shame, you tormentor! when you know that I love tea as well as did your model of politeness, Dr. Johnson!  Not one line of all that nauseating scientific stuff shall you read to me.  Here is a volume of poems of the ‘Female Poets’; do be agreeable for once in your life, and select me some sweet little rhythmic gem of Mrs. Browning, or Mrs. Norton, or L. E. L.”

“Estelle, did you ever hear of the Peishwah of the Mahrattas?”

“I most assuredly never had even a hint of a syllable on the subject.  What of him, or her, or it?”

“Enough, that though you are evidently ambitious of playing his despotic role at Le Bocage, you will never succeed in reducing me to that condition of abject subjugation necessary to make me endure the perusal of ‘female poetry.’  I have always desired an opportunity of voting my cordial thanks to the wit who expressed so felicitously my own thorough conviction, that Pegasus had an unconquerable repugnance, hatred, to side-saddles.  You vow you will not listen to science; and I swear I won’t read poetry!  Suppose we compromise on this new number of the—­Magazine?  It is the ablest periodical published in this country.  Let me see the contents of this number.”

It was a dark, rainy morning in July.  Mrs. Murray was winding a quantity of zephyr wool, of various bright colors, which she had requested Edna to hold on her wrists; and at the mention of the magazine the latter looked up suddenly at the master of the house.

Holding his cigar between his thumb and third finger, his eye ran over the table of contents.

“‘Who smote the Marble Gods of Greece?’ Humph! rather a difficult question to answer after the lapse of twenty-two centuries.  But doubtless our archaeologists are so much wiser than the Athenian Senate of Five Hundred, who investigated the affair the day after it happened, that a perusal will be exceedingly edifying.  Now, then, for a solution of this classic mystery of the nocturnal iconoclasm; which, in my humble opinion, only the brazen lips of Minerva Promachus could satisfactorily explain.”

Turning to the article he read it aloud, without pausing to comment, while Edna’s heart bounded so rapidly that she could scarcely conceal her agitation.  It was, indeed, a treat to listen to him; and as his musical voice filled the room, she thought of Jean Paul Richter’s description of Goethe’s reading:  “There is nothing comparable to it.  It is like deep-toned thunder blended with whispering rain-drops.”

But the orphan’s pleasure was of short duration, and as Mr. Murray concluded the perusal, he tossed the magazine contemptuously across the room, and exclaimed: