ction,
and afterwards, when the host proposed they should go out into the
square and pretend it was a fete-champetre, walked round the limited
enclosure several times with her and, at a dozen turns of their talk,
bounded responsive--as with a positive passion for argument--to her
remarks upon the inner life.

"Oh, I see; I dare say you found it very quiet at Gardencourt. Naturally
there's not much going on there when there's such a lot of illness
about. Touchett's very bad, you know; the doctors have forbidden his
being in England at all, and he has only come back to take care of his
father. The old man, I believe, has half a dozen things the matter
with him. They call it gout, but to my certain knowledge he has organic
disease so developed that you may depend upon it he'll go, some day
soon, quite quickly. Of course that sort of thing makes a dreadfully
dull house; I wonder they have people when they can do so little for
them. Then I believe Mr. Touchett's always squabbling with his wife; she
lives away from her husband, you know, in that extraordinary American
way of yours. If you want a house where there's always something going
on, I recommend you to go down and stay with my sister, Lady Pensil,
in Bedfordshire. I'll write to her to-morrow and I'm sure she'll be
delighted to ask you. I know just what you want--you want a house
where they go in for theatricals and picnics and that sort of thing. My
sister's just that sort of woman; she's always getting up something or
other and she's always glad to have the sort of people who help her. I'm
sure she'll ask you down by return of post: she's tremendously fond of
distinguished people and writers. She writes herself, you know; but
I haven't read everything she has written. It's usually poetry, and I
don't go in much for poetry--unless it's Byron. I suppose you think a
great deal of Byron in America," Mr. Bantling continued, expanding
in the stimulating air of Miss Stackpole's attention, bringing up his
sequences promptly and changing his topic with an easy turn of hand.
Yet he none the less gracefully kept in sight of the idea, dazzling to
Henrietta, of her going to stay with Lady Pensil in Bedfordshire. "I
understand what you want; you want to see some genuine English sport.
The Touchetts aren't English at all, you know; they have their own
habits, their own language, their own food--some odd religion even, I
believe, of their own. The old man thinks it's wicked to hunt,