ple easily accounted for the
pretty glow that was upon her. At any time she could have "passed" for
twenty-five or twenty-six--a man of fifty would have honestly guessed
her to be about thirty but possibly two or three years younger--and
though extraordinary in this, she had been extraordinary in it for
years. There was nothing in either her looks or her manner to explain
George's uncomfortable feeling; and yet it increased, becoming suddenly
a vague resentment, as if she had done something unmotherly to him.

The fantastic moment passed; and even while it lasted, he was doing his
duty, greeting two pretty girls with whom he had grown up, as people
say, and warmly assuring them that he remembered them very well--an
assurance which might have surprised them "in anybody but Georgie
Minafer!" It seemed unnecessary, since he had spent many hours with
them no longer ago than the preceding August, They had with them their
parents and an uncle from out of town; and George negligently gave the
parents the same assurance he had given the daughters, but murmured
another form of greeting to the out-of-town uncle, whom he had
never seen before. This person George absently took note of as a
"queer-looking duck." Undergraduates had not yet adopted "bird." It was
a period previous to that in which a sophomore would have thought of the
Sharon girls' uncle as a "queer-looking bird," or, perhaps a "funny-face
bird." In George's time, every human male was to be defined, at
pleasure, as a "duck"; but "duck" was not spoken with admiring
affection, as in its former feminine use to signify a "dear"--on the
contrary, "duck" implied the speaker's personal detachment and humorous
superiority. An indifferent amusement was what George felt when
his mother, with a gentle emphasis, interrupted his interchange of
courtesies with the nieces to present him to the queer-looking duck
their uncle. This emphasis of Isabel's, though slight, enabled George
to perceive that she considered the queer-looking duck a person of some
importance; but it was far from enabling him to understand why. The
duck parted his thick and longish black hair on the side; his tie was
a forgetful looking thing, and his coat, though it fitted a good enough
middle-aged figure, no product of this year, or of last year either.
One of his eyebrows was noticeably higher than the other; and there were
whimsical lines between them, which gave him an apprehensive expression;
but his appreh