e it by the
smallest exertion.

"Do you think we could get Andy Pasmer to join us?"

"No, I can't encourage you with that idea. You must get on without Mr.
Pasmer; he's going back to Europe with his son-in-law."

"Do you mean that their girl's married?"

"No-engaged. It's just out."

"Well, I must say Mrs. Pasmer has made use of her time." He too liked to
imply that it was all an effect of her manoeuvring, and that the young
people had nothing to do with it; this survival from European fiction
dies hard. "Who is the young man?"

Mrs. Brinkley gave him an account of Dan Mavering as she had seen him at
Campobello, and of his family as she just heard of them. "Mr. Munt was
telling me about them as you came up."

"Why, was that John Munt?"

"Yes; didn't you know him?"

"No," said Corey sadly. "I don't know anybody nowadays. I seem to be
going to pieces every way. I don't call sixty-nine such a very great
age."

"Not at all!" cried Mrs. Brinkley. "I'm fifty-four myself, and
Brinkley's sixty."

"But I feel a thousand years old. I don't see people, and when I do I
don't know 'em. My head's in a cloud." He let it hang heavily; then
he lifted it, and said: "He's a nice, comfortable fellow, Munt is. Why
didn't he stop and talk a bit?"

"Well, Munt's modest, you know; and I suppose he thought he might be the
third that makes company a crowd. Besides, nobody stops and talks a bit
at these things. They're afraid of boring or being bored."

"Yes, they're all in as unnatural a mood as if they were posing for a
photograph. I wonder who invented this sort of thing? Do you know," said
the old man, "that I think it's rather worse with us than with any other
people? We're a simple, sincere folk, domestic in our instincts, not
gregarious or frivolous in any way; and when we're wrenched away
from our firesides, and packed in our best clothes into Jane's gilded
saloons, we feel vindictive; we feel wicked. When the Boston being
abandons himself--or herself--to fashion, she suffers a depravation into
something quite lurid. She has a bad conscience, and she hardens her
heart with talk that's tremendously cynical. It's amusing," said Corey,
staring round him purblindly at the groups and files of people surging
and eddying past the corner where he sat with Mrs. Brinkley.

"No; it's shocking," said his companion. "At any rate, you mustn't say
such things, even if you think them. I can't let you go too far, you
know. These young p