He recited «Break, break, break,» to Alice’s dog, who loved him, and looked up into his face with sapient, affectionate eyes—and whose name, like that of so many dogs in fiction and so few in fact, was simply Tray. For Little Billee was much given to monologues out loud, and profuse quotations from his favorite bards.
Everybody quoted that particular poem either mentally or aloud when they sat on that particular bench—except a few old-fashioned people, who still said,
«Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!»
or people of the very highest culture, who only quoted the nascent (and crescent) Robert Browning; or people of no culture at all, who simply held their tongues—and only felt the more!
Tray listened silently.
«Ah, Tray, the best thing but one to do with the sea is to paint
