in no manner of esteem. It was a plain clean round pattern face, marked
for recognition among so many only perhaps by a small figure, the sprig
on a china plate, that might have denoted deep obstinacy; and yet, with
its settled smoothness, it was neither stupid nor hard. It was as
calm as a room kept dusted and aired for candid earnest occasions,
the meeting of unanimous committees and the discussion of flourishing
businesses. If she had been a young man--and she had a little the head
of one--it would probably have been thought of her that she was likely
to become a Doctor or a Judge.

An observer would have gathered, further, that Mr. Flack's acquaintance
with Mr. Dosson and his daughters had had its origin in his crossing the
Atlantic eastward in their company more than a year before, and in some
slight association immediately after disembarking, but that each party
had come and gone a good deal since then--come and gone however without
meeting again. It was to be inferred that in this interval Miss Dosson
had led her father and sister back to their native land and had then a
second time directed their course to Europe. This was a new departure,
said Mr. Flack, or rather a new arrival: he understood that it
wasn't, as he called it, the same old visit. She didn't repudiate
the accusation, launched by her companion as if it might have been
embarrassing, of having spent her time at home in Boston, and even in a
suburban quarter of it: she confessed that as Bostonians they had been
capable of that. But now they had come abroad for longer--ever so much:
what they had gone home for was to make arrangements for a European
stay of which the limits were not to be told. So far as this particular
future opened out to her she freely acknowledged it. It appeared to meet
with George Flack's approval--he also had a big undertaking on that side
and it might require years, so that it would be pleasant to have his
friends right there. He knew his way round in Paris--or any place like
that--much better than round Boston; if they had been poked away in one
of those clever suburbs they would have been lost to him.

"Oh, well, you'll see as much as you want of us--the way you'll have to
take us," Delia Dosson said: which led the young man to ask which
that way was and to guess he had never known but one way to take
anything--which was just as it came. "Oh well, you'll see what you'll
make of it," the girl returned; and she would give for