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‘Oh, but I did mean it, and that’s why I’m sorry. I am a
very naughty girl sometimes, though you wouldn’t think so’
(this with a charming consciousness of her own beauty), ‘es-
pecially with Roman history. I don’t think the Romans were
half as brave as the Carthaginians; do you, Mr. Frere?’
Maurice, somewhat staggered by this question, could
only ask, ‘Why not?’
‘Well, I don’t like them half so well myself,’ says Sylvia,
with feminine disdain of reasons. ‘They always had so many
soldiers, though the others were so cruel when they con-
quered.’
‘Were they?’ says Frere.
‘Were they! Goodness gracious, yes! Didn’t they cut poor
Regulus’s eyelids off, and roll him down hill in a barrel full
of nails? What do you call that, I should like to know?’ and
Mr. Frere, shaking his red head with vast assumption of
classical learning, could not but concede that that was not
kind on the part of the Carthaginians.
‘You are a great scholar, Miss Sylvia,’ he remarked, with a
consciousness that this self-possessed girl was rapidly tak-
ing him out of his depth.
‘Are you fond of reading?’
‘Very.’
‘And what books do you read?’
‘Oh, lots! ‘Paul and Virginia’, and ‘Paradise Lost’, and
‘Shakespeare’s Plays’, and ‘Robinson Crusoe’, and ‘Blair’s
Sermons’, and ‘The Tasmanian Almanack’, and ‘The Book
of Beauty’, and ‘Tom Jones’.’
‘A somewhat miscellaneous collection, I fear,’ said Mrs.

1 For the Term of His Natural Life