s awfully like my wife."

"Well, she sets out to be pretty, doesn't she?" he altered it rather
lamely. Claire continued extremely scornful.

"Yes, I dare say," she admitted. "She may set out to be smart too, hung
round with things like a Christmas-tree, but she's as common as a
sixpenny bazaar. I'll tell you why I don't like her, Major Staines, and
who she reminds me of, but perhaps you think her pretty, too? I mean
that horrid woman, Mrs. Bouncing in our hotel?"

"But can't horrid women be pretty, too?" Winn ventured with meekness.

"No, of course not," said Claire, with great decisiveness. "Why, you
know horrid men can't be handsome. Look at Mr. Roper!" Winn was
uncertain if this point of knowledge had ever reached him; but he wasn't
at this time of day going to look at Mr. Roper, so he gave in.

"I dare say you're right," he said. "As a matter of fact, you know, I
never _do_ look at Roper."

"But that's not the reason," Claire went on, slightly softened by her
victory, "that I dislike her. I really dislike her because I think she
is bad for Maurice; but perhaps you haven't noticed the way he keeps
hanging about her. It makes me sick."

Winn admitted that he had noticed it.

"Still," he said, "of course if you hadn't proved to me that by being
horrid she couldn't be pretty, I should have supposed that he simply
hung about Mrs. Bouncing because she was--well, not precisely plain."

Claire looked doubtfully at him, but he wasn't smiling; he was merely
looking at her with sufficient attention.

"There are only two of us," she said in a low voice, "Maurice and me,
and I do so awfully want him to be a success. I don't think anybody
else does. I don't even know how much he wants it himself. You see,
Maurice is so young in many ways, and our people having died--he hasn't
had much of a chance, has he? Men ought to have fathers."

Winn listened intently; he always remembered anything she said, but this
particular opinion sank deep into the bottom of his heart: "Men ought to
have fathers."

"I've done the best I can," Claire went on, "but you see, I'm young,
too; there are lots of things I don't really know about life. I think
perhaps I sometimes believe too much that things are going to be jolly,
and that makes me a bad adviser for Maurice. Do you know what I mean?"

Winn nodded, but he determined that whether she expected or not, she
should have things jolly. He must be able to manage it. If one wanted a
thing