tears in her eyes, leaned over
her and kissed her fondly, and stroked her hair--"you are just as good
and sweet as you can be; and don't mind me; you know I get in moods
sometimes."

The old lady pulled her down and kissed her, and looked in her face with
beseeching eyes.

"What an old frump the mother is!" was Mrs. Glow's comment to Stanhope,
when she next met him; "but she is immensely amusing."

"She is a kind-hearted, motherly woman," replied King, a little sharply.

"Oh, motherly! Has it come to that? I do believe you are more than half
gone. The girl is pretty; she has a beautiful figure; but my gracious!
her parents are impossible--just impossible. And don't you think she's
a little too intellectual for society? I don't mean too intellectual, of
course, but too mental, don't you know--shows that first. You know what
I mean."

"But, Penelope, I thought it was the fashion now to be intellectual--go
in for reading, and literary clubs, Dante and Shakespeare, and political
economy, and all that."

"Yes, I belong to three clubs. I'm going to one tomorrow morning. We are
going to take up the 'Disestablishment of the English Church.' That's
different; we make it fit into social life somehow, and it doesn't
interfere. I'll tell you what, Stanhope, I'll take Miss Benson to the
Town and County Club next Saturday."

"That will be too intellectual for Miss Benson. I suppose the topic will
be Transcendentalism?"

"No; we have had that. Professor Spor, of Cambridge, is going to lecture
on Bacteria--if that's the way you pronounce it--those mites that get
into everything."

"I should think it would be very improving. I'll tell Miss Benson that
if she stays in Newport she must improve her mind."

"You can make yourself as disagreeable as you like to me, but mind you
are on your good behavior at dinner tonight, for the Misses Pelham will
be here."

The five-o'clock at Mrs. Bartlett Glow's was probably an event to nobody
in Newport except Mrs. Benson. To most it was only an incident in the
afternoon round and drive, but everybody liked to go there, for it
is one of the most charming of the moderate-sized villas. The lawn is
planted in exquisite taste, and the gardener has set in the open spaces
of green the most ingenious devices of flowers and foliage plants, and
nothing could be more enchanting than the view from the wide veranda on
the sea side. In theory, the occupants lounge there, read, embroider,
and swing in