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But early training and tastes are tenacious. We used to be taught that, while we ought not to wish for the palm without the dust, we should, nevertheless, keep Apollo’s bays immaculate; and, in spite of their slang, anacoluthons, and lack of metre, Guy’s poems struck some people (Teresa, for instance) as being not the bays but the aspidistras of Apollo—dusted by the housemaid every morning.

Towards five o’clock, the next day, their arrival was announced by ’Snice excitably barking at the front door, and by Concha—well, the inarticulate and loud noises of welcome with which Concha always greeted the return of her father, brother, or friends, is also best described by the word “barking.”

“It’s a friendly gift; I’m sure no ‘true woman’ is without it,” thought Teresa.

Arnold had his father’s short, sturdy body and his mother’s handsome head; Guy was small and slight, with large, widely-opened, china-blue eyes and yellow hair; he was always exquisitely dressed; he talked in a shrill voice, always at a tremendous rate. They were both twenty-seven years old.