“Pope!” snorted Mr. Elliot. “Who reads Pope, I should like to know? And as for reading about him—No, no, Miss Allan; be persuaded you will benefit the world much more by dancing than by writing.” It was one of Mr. Elliot’s affectations that nothing in the world could compare with the delights of dancing—nothing in the world was so tedious as literature. Thus he sought pathetically enough to ingratiate himself with the young, and to prove to them beyond a doubt that though married to a ninny of a wife, and rather pale and bent and careworn by his weight of learning, he was as much alive as the youngest of them all.