families will be able to call in perfect safety."

"CECIL?" exclaimed Lucy.

"Don't be rude, dear," said his mother placidly. "Lucy, don't screech.
It's a new bad habit you're getting into."

"But has Cecil--"

"Friends of Cecil's," he repeated, "'and so really dee-sire-rebel. Ahem!
Honeychurch, I have just telegraphed to them.'"

She got up from the grass.

It was hard on Lucy. Mr. Beebe sympathized with her very much. While she
believed that her snub about the Miss Alans came from Sir Harry Otway,
she had borne it like a good girl. She might well "screech" when
she heard that it came partly from her lover. Mr. Vyse was a
tease--something worse than a tease: he took a malicious pleasure
in thwarting people. The clergyman, knowing this, looked at Miss
Honeychurch with more than his usual kindness.

When she exclaimed, "But Cecil's Emersons--they can't possibly be the
same ones--there is that--" he did not consider that the exclamation
was strange, but saw in it an opportunity of diverting the conversation
while she recovered her composure. He diverted it as follows:

"The Emersons who were at Florence, do you mean? No, I don't suppose it
will prove to be them. It is probably a long cry from them to friends
of Mr. Vyse's. Oh, Mrs. Honeychurch, the oddest people! The queerest
people! For our part we liked them, didn't we?" He appealed to Lucy.
"There was a great scene over some violets. They picked violets and
filled all the vases in the room of these very Miss Alans who have
failed to come to Cissie Villa. Poor little ladies! So shocked and so
pleased. It used to be one of Miss Catharine's great stories. 'My dear
sister loves flowers,' it began. They found the whole room a mass of
blue--vases and jugs--and the story ends with 'So ungentlemanly and yet
so beautiful.' It is all very difficult. Yes, I always connect those
Florentine Emersons with violets."

"Fiasco's done you this time," remarked Freddy, not seeing that his
sister's face was very red. She could not recover herself. Mr. Beebe saw
it, and continued to divert the conversation.

"These particular Emersons consisted of a father and a son--the son
a goodly, if not a good young man; not a fool, I fancy, but very
immature--pessimism, et cetera. Our special joy was the father--such a
sentimental darling, and people declared he had murdered his wife."

In his normal state Mr. Beebe would never have repeated such gossip,
but he was trying to shelter Luc