d trust God to
slip me over an ace or two when I need them. You tell her she can
depend on me not to fall down on her ... and Miss Eustis."

"No need to tell Madame what she already knows."

"Huh!" With his chin in his hand and his head bent, he stared out over
the autumn garden with eyes which did not see its flaming flowers. Of
a sudden his shoulders twitched; he laughed aloud.

"What are you laughing at?" I was startled out of a revery of my own.

"Everything," said the Butterfly Man, succinctly, and stood up and
shook himself. "And everybody. And me in particular. _Me!_ Oh, good
Lord, think of _Me!_" He whistled for Kerry, and took himself off. I
watched him walk down the street, and saw Judge Mayne's familiar
greeting; and Major Cartwright stop him, and with his hand on the
Butterfly Man's arm, walk off with him. Major Cartwright had kept
George Inglesby out of two coveted clubs, for all his wealth; he was
stiff as the proverbial poker to Howard Hunter, for all that
gentleman's impeccable connections; he met John Flint, not as through
a glass darkly, but face to face.

My mother, coming out of the house with her cherished manuscript
cookbook in her hand, looked after them thoughtfully:

"Yes; it is high time for that man to know his proper place!"

"And does he not?"

"Oh, I suppose so, Armand. In a man's way, though--not a woman's. It's
the woman's way that really matters, you see. When women acknowledge
that man socially--and I mean it to happen--his light won't be hidden
under a bushel basket. He will climb up into his candlestick and
shine."

That sense of bewilderment which at times overwhelmed me when the case
of John Flint pressed hard, overtook me now, with its ironic humor. As
he himself had expressed it, I felt myself caught by a Something too
big to withstand. I was afraid to do anything, to say anything, for or
against, this launching of his barque upon the social sea. I felt that
the affair had been once more lifted out of my power; that my serving
now was but to stand and wait.

And in the meanwhile my mother, with her own hands, washed and darned
the priceless old lace that was her chiefest pride; had something done
to a frock; got out her sacredest treasures of linen and china and
silver; requisitioned the Mayne and the Dexter spoons as well; had the
Parish House scoured until it glittered; did everything to the garden
but wash and iron it; spent momentous and odorous hours with Clelie