I'm told.
You must get down to my sister's in time for the theatricals, and I'm
sure she'll be glad to give you a part. I'm sure you act well; I know
you're very clever. My sister's forty years old and has seven children,
but she's going to play the principal part. Plain as she is she makes up
awfully well--I will say for her. Of course you needn't act if you don't
want to."

In this manner Mr. Bantling delivered himself while they strolled over
the grass in Winchester Square, which, although it had been peppered
by the London soot, invited the tread to linger. Henrietta thought her
blooming, easy-voiced bachelor, with his impressibility to feminine
merit and his splendid range of suggestion, a very agreeable man, and
she valued the opportunity he offered her. "I don't know but I would go,
if your sister should ask me. I think it would be my duty. What do you
call her name?"

"Pensil. It's an odd name, but it isn't a bad one."

"I think one name's as good as another. But what's her rank?".

"Oh, she's a baron's wife; a convenient sort of rank. You're fine enough
and you're not too fine."

"I don't know but what she'd be too fine for me. What do you call the
place she lives in--Bedfordshire?"

"She lives away in the northern corner of it. It's a tiresome country,
but I dare say you won't mind it. I'll try and run down while you're
there."

All this was very pleasant to Miss Stackpole, and she was sorry to be
obliged to separate from Lady Pensil's obliging brother. But it happened
that she had met the day before, in Piccadilly, some friends whom she
had not seen for a year: the Miss Climbers, two ladies from Wilmington,
Delaware, who had been travelling on the Continent and were now
preparing to re-embark. Henrietta had had a long interview with them on
the Piccadilly pavement, and though the three ladies all talked at once
they had not exhausted their store. It had been agreed therefore that
Henrietta should come and dine with them in their lodgings in Jermyn
Street at six o'clock on the morrow, and she now bethought herself of
this engagement. She prepared to start for Jermyn Street, taking leave
first of Ralph Touchett and Isabel, who, seated on garden chairs
in another part of the enclosure, were occupied--if the term may be
used--with an exchange of amenities less pointed than the practical
colloquy of Miss Stackpole and Mr. Bantling. When it had been settled
between Isabel and her friend that they should b