erything in her life was dreary?"

"Not everything, but most things. And she didn't tell me so much as I
guessed it. She'll tell me more the next time. She'll behave properly
now about coming in to see me; I told her she ought to."

"I'm glad of that," I said. "Keep her with you as much as possible."

"I don't follow you closely," Mrs. Nettlepoint replied, "but so far as I
do I don't think your remarks in the best taste."

"Well, I'm too excited, I lose my head in these sports," I had to
recognise--"cold-blooded as you think me. Doesn't she like Mr.
Porterfield?"

"Yes, that's the worst of it."

I kept making her stare. "The worst of it?"

"He's so good--there's no fault to be found with him. Otherwise she'd
have thrown it all up. It has dragged on since she was eighteen: she
became engaged to him before he went abroad to study. It was one of
those very young and perfectly needless blunders that parents in America
might make so much less possible than they do. The thing is to insist on
one's daughter waiting, on the engagement's being long; and then, after
you've got that started, to take it on every occasion as little seriously
as possible--to make it die out. You can easily tire it to death," Mrs.
Nettlepoint competently stated. "However," she concluded, "Mr.
Porterfield has taken this one seriously for some years. He has done his
part to keep it alive. She says he adores her."

"His part? Surely his part would have been to marry her by this time."

"He has really no money." My friend was even more confidently able to
report it than I had been.

"He ought to have got some, in seven years," I audibly reflected.

"So I think she thinks. There are some sorts of helplessness that are
contemptible. However, a small difference has taken place. That's why
he won't wait any longer. His mother has come out, she has something--a
little--and she's able to assist him. She'll live with them and bear
some of the expenses, and after her death the son will have what there
is."

"How old is she?" I cynically asked.

"I haven't the least idea. But it doesn't, on his part, sound very
heroic--or very inspiring for our friend here. He hasn't been to America
since he first went out."

"That's an odd way of adoring her," I observed.

"I made that objection mentally, but I didn't express it to her. She met
it indeed a little by telling me that he had had other chances to marry."

"That surprises me,