be bothered with him
in all his dear hobble-dehoy time; she resented his claims, the
unreasonable creature, used to limit me to three anecdotes a week;
and now she has him on her hands, if you like. See the pretty air
of deference in the way he listens to her! He has nice manners, the
villain, if he is a Chichele!'

'Oh, you have improved Sir Peter's,' I said kindly.

'I do hope Judy will think him worth while. I can't quite expect that he
will be up to her, bless him, she is so much cleverer, isn't she, than
any of us? But if she will just be herself with him it will make such a
difference.'

The other two crossed the room to us at that, and Judy gaily made Somers
over to his mother, trailing off to find Robert in the billiard-room.

'Well, what has Mrs. Harbottle been telling you?' Anna asked him.

The young man's eye followed Judy, his hand went musingly to his
moustache.

'She was telling me,' he said, 'that people in India were sepulchers of
themselves, but that now and then one came who could roll away another's
stone.'

'It sounds promising,' said Lady Chichele to me.

'It sounds cryptic,' I laughed to Somers, but I saw that he had the key.

I can not say that I attended diligently to Mr. Chichele's socks, but
the part corresponding was freely assigned me. After his people went I
saw him often. He pretended to find qualities in my tea, implied that he
found them in my talk. As a matter of fact it was my inquiring attitude
that he loved, the knowledge that there was no detail that he could give
me about himself, his impressions and experiences, that was unlikely to
interest me. I would not for the world imply that he was egotistical or
complacent, absolutely the reverse, but he possessed an articulate soul
which found its happiness in expression, and I liked to listen. I feel
that these are complicated words to explain a very simple relation,
and I pause to wonder what is left to me if I wished to describe his
commerce with Mrs. Harbottle. Luckily there is an alternative; one
needn't do it. I wish I had somewhere on paper Judy's own account of it
at this period, however. It is a thing she would have enjoyed writing
and more enjoyed communicating, at this period.

There was a grave reticence in his talk about her which amused me in the
beginning. Mrs. Harbottle had been for ten years important enough to us
all, but her serious significance, the light and the beauty in her,
had plainly been reserved for