f the Byrds, his mother's side of the
house, going back (in order to be explicit) through three generations.
Strange to say, this did not appear to satisfy her; I will not say that
she interrupted me, for she did not; but she had nevertheless, in some
ways, an appearance of--of being perhaps somewhat impatient."

"Oh, _I_ know!" said Mrs. Moore, nodding her head. "She coughed behind
her hand; and she shook out her handkerchief, holding it by the exact
middle between her forefinger and thumb; and she tapped on the floor
with the point of her slipper; and she settled her cuffs; and then she
coughed again."

"That is exactly what she did! You have a wonderful insight, Penelope,"
said her husband, admiringly.

"Give me a _woman_, and I'll unravel her for you in no time--in no time
at all," answered Penelope. "But men are different--_so_ much deeper;
you yourself are very deep, Middleton."

The clergyman stroked his chin meditatively; his eyes wandered, and
after a while rested peacefully on the floor.

"There! I know just what you're thinking of now," resumed his wife from
her sofa; "I can tell you every word!"

Her husband, who at that moment was thinking of nothing at all, unless
it might be of a worn place which he had detected in the red and white
matting at his feet, raised his eyes and looked at her with amiable
expectancy. He had long ago learned to acquiesce in all the discoveries
respecting himself made by his clever Penelope; he even believed in them
after a vague fashion, and was much interested in hearing the latest.
But he was so unmitigatedly modest, he took such impersonal views of
everything, including himself, that he could listen to her eulogistic
divinations by the hour without the least real appropriation of them, as
though they had been spoken of some one else. He thought them very
wonderful, and he thought her almost a sibyl as she brought them forth;
but no glow of self-appreciation followed, this frugal man was not
easily made to glow. At present, when his wife had unrolled before him
the interesting thoughts which she knew he was thinking (and the rector
himself was always of the opinion that he must be thinking them
somewhere, in some remote part of his mind which for the moment he had
forgotten), she concluded, triumphantly, as follows: "I can always tell
what you are thinking of from the expression of your face, Middleton;
it's not in the _least_ necessary for you to speak." Which was on th