"Which to Delilah was a daring ambition indeed—quite hitching her wagon to a star.
"Well, then," said my friend Annabel Lee, "this was when the Spoon-bill family was in its youngness.
"The years followed one after another, and the three children grew. And it came about that Lilith was three-and-twenty, and Le Page was two-and-twenty, and Delilah was twenty.
"They were much as they had been when they were children. Lilith, I may say in passing, was not an actress, nor a lecturer, nor yet a sculptor—and Le Page was merely Le Page.
"Also Delilah was Delilah, but had ceased to be elementary in some ways, while in others she was still, and so would be until the finish.
"It so happened that a young spoon-bill of masculine persuasion, from the other
