It was chilling, but he was not easily chilled when self was in the question--as it generally was with Tom.

He felt, however, that he must talk or be lost.
"I have taken the liberty," he said, "of bringing you the song I had the pleasure--a greater pleasure than you will readily imagine--of hearing you admire the other evening." "I forget," said Hesper.
"I would not have ventured," continued Tom, "had it not happened that both air and words were my own." "Ah!--indeed!--I did not know you were a poet, Mr.--" She had forgotten his name.
"That or nothing," answered Tom, boldly.
"And a musician, too ?" "At your service, Mrs.Redmain." "I don't happen to want a poet at present--or a musician either," she said, with just enough of a smile to turn the rudeness into what Tom accepted as a flattering familiarity.
"Nor am I in want of a place," he replied, with spirit; "a bird can sing on any branch.

Will you allow me to sing this song on yours?
Mrs.
Downport scarcely gave the expression I could have desired .-- May I read the voices before I sing them ?" Without either intimacy or encouragement, Tom was capable of offering to read his own verses! Such fools self-partisanship makes of us.
Mrs.Redmain was, for her, not a little amused with the young man; he was not just like every other that came to the house.
"I should li-i-ike," she said.
Tom laid himself back a little in his chair, with the sheet of music in his hand, closed his eyes, and repeated as follows--he knew all his own verses by heart: "Lovely lady, sweet disdain! Prithee keep thy Love at home; Bind him with a tressed chain; Do not let the mischief roam.
"In the jewel-cave, thine eye, In the tangles of thy hair, It is well the imp should lie-- There his home, his heaven is there.
"But for pity's sake, forbid Beauty's wasp at me to fly; Sure the child should not be chid, And his mother standing by.
"For if once the villain came To my house, too well I know He would set it all aflame-- To the winds its ashes blow.
"Prithee keep thy Love at home; Net him up or he will start; And if once the mischief roam, Straight he'll wing him to my heart." What there might be in verse like this to touch with faintest emotion, let him say who cultivates art for art's sake.

Doubtless there is that in rhythm and rhyme and cadence which will touch the pericardium when the heart itself is not to be reached by divinest harmony; but, whether such women as Hesper feel this touch or only admire a song as they admire the church-prayers and Shakespeare, or whether, imagining in it some _tour de force_ of which they are themselves incapable, they therefore look upon it as a mighty thing, I am at a loss to determine.
All I know is that a gleam as from some far-off mirror of admiration did certainly, to Tom's great satisfaction, appear on Hesper's countenance.

As, however, she said nothing, he, to waive aside a threatening awkwardness, lightly subjoined: "Queen Anne is all the rage now, you see." Mrs.Redmain knew that Queen-Anne houses were in fashion, and was even able to recognize one by its flush window-frames, while she had felt something odd, which might be old-fashioned, in the song; between the two, she was led to the conclusion that the fashion of Queen Anne's time had been revived in the making of verses also.
"Can you, then, make a song to any pattern you please ?" she asked.
"I fancy so," answered Tom, indifferently, as if it were nothing to him to do whatever he chose to attempt.