‘Just going to ask for the same information,’ said Mr. Neigh, determining the very longest hair in his beard to an infinitesimal nicety by drawing its lower portion through his fingers.  ’I have quite forgotten—­cannot keep people’s names in my head at all; nor could my father either—­nor any of my family—­a very odd thing.  But my old friend Mrs. Napper knows for certain.’  And he turned to one of a small group of middle-aged persons near, who, instead of skimming the surface of things in general, like the rest of the company, were going into the very depths of them.

’O—­that is the celebrated Mrs. Petherwin, the woman who makes rhymes and prints ’em,’ said Mrs. Napper, in a detached sentence, and then continued talking again to those on the other side of her.

The two loungers went on with their observations of Ethelberta’s headdress, which, though not extraordinary or eccentric, did certainly convey an idea of indefinable novelty.  Observers were sometimes half inclined to think that her cuts and modes were acquired by some secret communication with the mysterious clique which orders the livery of the fashionable world, for—­and it affords a parallel to cases in which clever thinkers in other spheres arrive independently at one and the same conclusion—­Ethelberta’s fashion often turned out to be the coming one.

‘O, is that the woman at last?’ said Neigh, diminishing his broad general gaze at the room to a close criticism of Ethelberta.

‘"The rhymes,” as Mrs. Napper calls them, are not to be despised,’ said his companion.  ’They are not quite virginibus puerisque, and the writer’s opinions of life and society differ very materially from mine, but I cannot help admiring her in the more reflective pieces; the songs I don’t care for.  The method in which she handles curious subjects, and at the same time impresses us with a full conviction of her modesty, is very adroit, and somewhat blinds us to the fact that no such poems were demanded of her at all.’

‘I have not read them,’ said Neigh, secretly wrestling with his jaw, to prevent a yawn; ’but I suppose I must.  The truth is, that I never care much for reading what one ought to read; I wish I did, but I cannot help it.  And, no doubt, you admire the lady immensely for writing them:  I don’t.  Everybody is so talented now-a-days that the only people I care to honour as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.  I am myself hoping for a corner in some biographical dictionary when the time comes for those works only to contain lists of the exceptional individuals of whom nothing is known but that they lived and died.’

‘Ah—­listen.  They are going to sing one of her songs,’ said his friend, looking towards a bustling movement in the neighbourhood of the piano.  ’I believe that song, “When tapers tall,” has been set to music by three or four composers already.’

‘Men of any note?’ said Neigh, at last beaten by his yawn, which courtesy nevertheless confined within his person to such an extent that only a few unimportant symptoms, such as reduced eyes and a certain rectangular manner of mouth in speaking, were visible.