To his disappointment she mentioned one of the few commonplace things the collection contained--a last-century production, dull and respectable, which, surely, but for the glamour of some pleasant association, the editor would never have included.

Happily, however, he bethought himself in time not to tell her the thing was worthless: such a word, instead of chipping the shell in which the girl's faculty lay dormant, would have smashed the whole egg into a miserable albuminous mass.

And he was well rewarded; for, the same day, in the evening, he heard her singing gayly over her work, and listening discovered that she was singing verse after verse of one of the best ballads in the whole book.

She had chosen with the fancy of pleasing Godfrey; she sang to please herself.

After this discovery he set himself in earnest to the task of developing her intellectual life, and, daily almost, grew more interested in the endeavor.