_Louise_ (_admiringly_). I'm so glad I've seen you lunch. Now I shall be able to fancy every day exactly what you are having.
_Her Fiancé_ (_to assist her imagination_). Mind you, I don't _always_ have porridge. Sometimes it's mushroom croquettes, or turnip and onion rissoles,--whatever's going. Now yesterday, for instance, I had----
[_He details exactly what he had, and she listens to these moving episodes with the rapt interest of a Desdemona._
_First Literary Clerk._ No; but look here, you don't take my _point_. I'm not running down SWINBURNE--all I'm arguing is, he couldn't have written some of the things BROWNING did.
_Second L. C._ Of course not--when BROWNING had written them--_that's_ nothing against him.
_First L. C._ (_warmly_). I'm not saying it _is_. I'm telling you the difference between the two men--now BROWNING, he makes you _think_!
_Second L. C._ He never made _me_ think, that's all _I_ know.
_Third L. C._ Nor yet me. Now, 'ERBERT SPENCER, he _does_ make you think, if you like!
_First L. C._ Now you're getting on to something else. The grand fault I find with SWINBURNE, is----
_Second L. C._ Hold hard a bit. Have you read him?
_Third L. C._ Yes, let's 'ave that first. 'Ave you _read_ 'im?
_First L. C._ (_with dignity_). I've read as much of him as I care to.
_Second L. C._ (_aggressively_). What have you read of his? Name it.
_First L. C._ I've read his _Atlantis in Caledonia_, for one thing.
_Second L. C._ (_disappointed_). Well, you don't deny there's poetry in _that_, do you?
_First L. C._ I don't call it poetry in the sense I call WALT WHITMAN poetry--certainly not.
_Second L. C._ There you touch a wider question--there's no _rhyme_ in WHITMAN, to begin with.
_First L. C._ No more there is in MILTON; but I suppose you'll admit _he's_ a poet.
[_And so on, until none of them is quite sure what he is arguing about exactly, though each feels he has got decidedly the best of it._
_First Lady Clerk_ (_at adjoining table, to_ Second L. C.). How excited those young men do get, to be sure. I do like to hear them taking up such intellectual subjects, though. Now, _my_ brothers talk of nothing but horses, and music-halls, and football, and things like that.
_Second L. C._ (_pensively_). I expect it's the difference in food that accounts for it. I don't think I _could_ care for a man that ate meat. Are you going to have another muffin, dear? _I_ am.