Crossword-Solution: HILARIA 7 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 10

The fable alluded to occurs in the _Pia Hilaria_ of Gazæus, and in Le Grand's _Fabliaux_; it makes the subject of a humorous tale by Mr Robert Southey.

But in his most curious searchings into the likely future as he lay that night for an hour or so upon a wakeful pillow, he did not picture anything as delightful as, in after years, he was to realise Hilaria Eliot had been for those boys who at the time so casually and unthinkingly enjoyed her wayward companionship.

Ishmael was dancing opposite Hilaria Eliot, and his enjoyment of it lay in knowing that Killigrew, who had basely tried to trip him up shortly before, was suffering pangs of envy.

Rennyites who despised girls, nor of those who held the cult of the doctor's daughter, that dizzy exemplar of fashion, nor of those others--a small band these latter, made up of the best boys in the school, little and big--who admired and liked Hilaria as a "good sort." Killigrew was determined to be different, and so, like Burns, "battered" himself into love.

Thus it came about that, though in after years those stolen meetings between Hilaria and a ring of boys would flash into his memory as being romance in essence, at the time they held no more thrill for him than might be imparted by some new novel--contraband in the perpetual war against grown-ups--that she would bring to read aloud to them in some hollow of the moor.