r than life when Mrs.
Moreen talked of them with Paula and Amy. Their initiations gave their
new inmate at first an almost dazzling sense of culture. Mrs. Moreen had
translated something at some former period--an author whom it made
Pemberton feel borne never to have heard of. They could imitate Venetian
and sing Neapolitan, and when they wanted to say something very
particular communicated with each other in an ingenious dialect of their
own, an elastic spoken cipher which Pemberton at first took for some
patois of one of their countries, but which he "caught on to" as he would
not have grasped provincial development of Spanish or German.

"It's the family language--Ultramoreen," Morgan explained to him drolly
enough; but the boy rarely condescended to use it himself, though he
dealt in colloquial Latin as if he had been a little prelate.

Among all the "days" with which Mrs. Moreen's memory was taxed she
managed to squeeze in one of her own, which her friends sometimes forgot.
But the house drew a frequented air from the number of fine people who
were freely named there and from several mysterious men with foreign
titles and English clothes whom Morgan called the princes and who, on
sofas with the girls, talked French very loud--though sometimes with some
oddity of accent--as if to show they were saying nothing improper.
Pemberton wondered how the princes could ever propose in that tone and so
publicly: he took for granted cynically that this was what was desired of
them. Then he recognised that even for the chance of such an advantage
Mrs. Moreen would never allow Paula and Amy to receive alone. These
young ladies were not at all timid, but it was just the safeguards that
made them so candidly free. It was a houseful of Bohemians who wanted
tremendously to be Philistines.

In one respect, however, certainly they achieved no rigour--they were
wonderfully amiable and ecstatic about Morgan. It was a genuine
tenderness, an artless admiration, equally strong in each. They even
praised his beauty, which was small, and were as afraid of him as if they
felt him of finer clay. They spoke of him as a little angel and a
prodigy--they touched on his want of health with long vague faces.
Pemberton feared at first an extravagance that might make him hate the
boy, but before this happened he had become extravagant himself. Later,
when he had grown rather to hate the others, it was a bribe to patience
for him that they w