s anomalous. To
be sure, he was still Mr. Randolph's private secretary, Madam's top
sergeant, Miss Isobel's and Miss Enid's body-guard, and the household's
general-utility man; but he was now something else in addition. Miss
Isobel had discovered, quite by chance, that he was the grandson of Dr.
Ezra Quinby, whose book "Christianizing China" had been one of the
inspirations of her girlhood.

"And to think we considered asking him to eat in the pantry!" she
exclaimed in horror to her sister.

"Well, I told you all along he was a gentleman by instinct," said Miss
Enid.

To be sure, they were constantly shocked by his manners and his frank
method of speech, but they were also exhilarated. He was like a
disturbing but refreshing breeze that swept through their quiet, ordered
lives. He talked about things and places they had never heard of or seen,
and recounted his experiences with an enthusiasm that was contagious.

As for Quin, he found, to his surprise, that he was enjoying his new
quarters quite as much as he had the old ones. Madam was a never-ending
source of amusement and interest to him, and Miss Isobel and Miss Enid
soon had each her individual appeal. He liked the swish of their silk
petticoats, and the play of their slim white hands about the coffee-tray.
He liked their super-feminine delicacies of speech and motion, and the
flattering interest they began to take in all his affairs.

Miss Isobel developed a palpitating concern for his spiritual welfare and
invited him to go to church with her. She even introduced him to the
minister with proud reference to his distinguished grandfather, and
basked in the reflected glory.

Quin did not take kindly to church. He considered that he had done his
full duty by it in the first fourteen years of his life, when he, along
with the regenerate heathen, had been forced to attend five services
every Sunday in the gloomy chapel in the compound at Nanking. But if
Eleanor's aunt had asked him to accompany her to the gates of hell
instead of the portals of heaven, he would have acquiesced eagerly. So
strenuously did he lift his voice in the familiar hymns of his youth that
he was promptly urged to join the choir, an ordeal whose boredom was
mitigated only during the few moments when the collection was taken up
and he and the tenor could bet on which deacon would make his round
first.

Not for years had Miss Isobel had such thrilling occupation as that of
returning Ezra Qu