ly about his journey--not talking too much, but appealing
from one to another with a quick deferent grace, and allowing them
always the lead. "This is better and better," thought Miss Bracy as she
poured tea; and, after a while, "But this is amazing!" He was a
thorough child, too, with all his unconscious tact. The scent of a
lemon-verbena plant fetched him suddenly to his feet with his eyes
bright. "Please let me--" he thrust his face into the bush;
"I have never seen it growing like this."

Miss Bracy looked at Mr. Frank. How utterly different it was from their
old-maidish expectations! They had pictured the scene a hundred times,
and always it included some awkwardly decorous reference to the dead
woman. _This_ had been their terror--to do justice to the occasion
without hurting the poor boy's feelings--to meet his sullen shyness,
perhaps antipathy, with a welcome which somehow excused the past.
Yes, the past (they had felt) required excuse to _him_. And he had made
no allusion to his mother, and obviously wished for none. Miss Bracy
could not help smiling at the picture of their fears.

The boy turned, caught her smiling, and broke into a jolly laugh at his
own absurdity. It echoed in the garden, where no one had laughed aloud
for years.

And with that laugh Bassett's revenge began.

IV.

For with that laugh they began to love him. They did not--or at any
rate Miss Bracy 'did not--know it at the time. For some days they
watched him; and he, the unsuspicious one, administered a score of
shocks as again and again he took them neatly and decisively at
unawares. He had accepted them at once and in entire good faith.
They were (with just the right recognition of their seniority) good
comrades in this jolliest of worlds. They were his holiday hosts, and
it was not for the guest to hint (just yet) at the end of the holiday.

He surprised them at every turn. His father's canvases filled him with
admiring awe. "Oh, but I say--however is it done?" As he stood before
them with legs a trifle wide, he smoothed the top of his head with a
gesture of perplexity. And Mr. Frank, standing at his shoulder with
legs similarly spread, used the same gesture--as Miss Bracy had seen him
use it a thousand times. Yet the boy had no artistic talent--not so
much as a germ. For beauty of line and beauty of colour he inherited an
impeccable eye; indeed his young senses were alive to seize all innocent
delight,--his