in fact when he
most liked that he was on the whole most tempted to mystify. "Only Mrs.
Brook?--no others?"

"'Mrs. Brook'?" his elder echoed; staring an instant as if literally
missing the connexion; but quickly after, to show he was not stupid--and
indeed it seemed to show he was delightful--smiling with extravagant
intelligence. "Is that the right thing to say?"

Mitchy gave the kindest of laughs. "Well, I dare say I oughtn't to."

"Oh I didn't mean to correct you," his interlocutor hastened to profess;
"I meant on the contrary, will it be right for me too?"

Mitchy's great goggle attentively fixed him. "Try it."

"To HER?"

"To every one."

"To her husband?"

"Oh to Edward," Mitchy laughed again, "perfectly!"

"And must I call him 'Edward'?"

"Whatever you do will be right," Mitchy returned--"even though it should
happen to be sometimes what I do."

His companion, as if to look at him with a due appreciation of this,
stopped swinging the nippers and put them on. "You people here have a
pleasant way--!"

"Oh we HAVE!"--Mitchy, taking him up, was gaily emphatic. He began,
however, already to perceive the mystification which in this case was to
be his happy effect.

"Mr. Vanderbank," his victim remarked with perhaps a shade more of
reserve, "has told me a good deal about you." Then as if, in a finer
manner, to keep the talk off themselves: "He knows a great many ladies."

"Oh yes, poor chap, he can't help it. He finds a lady wherever he
turns."

The stranger took this in, but seemed a little to challenge it. "Well,
that's reassuring, if one sometimes fancies there are fewer."

"Fewer than there used to be?--I see what you mean," said Mitchy. "But
if it has struck you so, that's awfully interesting." He glared and
grinned and mused. "I wonder."

"Well, we shall see." His friend seemed to wish not to dogmatise.

"SHALL we?" Mitchy considered it again in its high suggestive light.
"You will--but how shall I?" Then he caught himself up with a blush.
"What a beastly thing to say--as if it were mere years that make you see
it!"

His companion this time gave way to the joke. "What else can it be--if
I've thought so?"

"Why, it's the facts themselves, and the fine taste, and above all
something qui ne court pas les rues, an approach to some experience of
what a lady IS." The young man's acute reflexion appeared suddenly to
flower into a vision of opportunity that swept everything else away.
"Excuse