dn't tell you," she went on, "that the creature is at least twenty
years older than my baby, and not at all nice at that. George didn't
tell me, mind, but he couldn't deny a single thing. It was about her
that they fell out. Poor George remonstrated, not too diplomatically, I
daresay, but I can quite see that my Bob behaved as he was never known
to behave on land or sea. The poor child has been bewitched, neither
more nor less."

"He'll get over it," I murmured, with the somewhat shaky confidence born
of my own experience.

Catherine looked at me in mild surprise.

"But it's going on now, Duncan--it's going on still!"

"Well," I added, with all the comfort that my voice would carry, and
which an exaggerated concern seemed to demand: "well, Catherine, it
can't go very far at his age!" Nor to this hour can I yet conceive a
sounder saying, in all the circumstances of the case, and with one's
knowledge of the type of lad; but my fate was the common one of
comforters, and I was made speedily and painfully aware that I had now
indeed said the most unfortunate thing.

Catherine did not stamp her foot, but she did everything else required
by tradition of the exasperated lady. Not go far? As if it had not gone
too far already to be tolerated another instant longer than was
necessary!

"He is making a fool of himself--my boy--my Bob--before a whole
hotelful of sharp eyes and sharper tongues! Is that not far enough for
it to have gone? Duncan, it must be stopped, and stopped at once; but I
am not the one to do it. I would rather it went on," cried Catherine
tragically, as though the pit yawned before us all, "than that his
mother should fly to his rescue before all the world! But a friend might
do it, Duncan--if--"

Her voice had dropped. I bent my ear.

"If only," she sighed, "I had a friend who would!"

Catherine was still looking down when I looked up; but the droop of the
slender body, the humble angle of the cavalier hat, the faint flush
underneath, all formed together a challenge and an appeal which were the
more irresistible for their sweet shamefacedness. Acute consciousness of
the past (I thought), and (I even fancied) some penitence for a wrong by
no means past undoing, were in every sensitive inch of her, as she sat a
suppliant to the old player of that part. And there are emotions of
which the body may be yet more eloquent than the face; there was the
figure of Watts's "Hope" drooping over as she drooped, no