e their love-affairs
in their own way. The only one I care the least for is the boy."

"Yes, it is forlorn for him. But he likes Mr. Kenby, and--No, it's
horrid, and you can't make it anything else!"

"Well, I'm not trying to." He turned his face away. "I must get my nap,
now." After she thought he must have fallen asleep, he said, "The first
thing you know, those old Eltwins will be coming round and telling us
that they're going to get divorced." Then he really slept.

XXXII.

The mid-day dinner at Pupp's was the time to see the Carlsbad world, and
the Marches had the habit of sitting long at table to watch it.

There was one family in whom they fancied a sort of literary quality, as
if they had come out of some pleasant German story, but they never knew
anything about them. The father by his dress must have been a Protestant
clergyman; the mother had been a beauty and was still very handsome; the
daughter was good-looking, and of a good-breeding which was both girlish
and ladylike. They commended themselves by always taking the table
d'hote dinner, as the Marches did, and eating through from the soup and
the rank fresh-water fish to the sweet, upon the same principle: the
husband ate all the compote and gave the others his dessert, which was
not good for him. A young girl of a different fascination remained as
much a mystery. She was small and of an extreme tenuity, which became
more bewildering as she advanced through her meal, especially at supper,
which she made of a long cucumber pickle, a Frankfort sausage of twice
the pickle's length, and a towering goblet of beer; in her lap she held
a shivering little hound; she was in the decorous keeping of an elderly
maid, and had every effect of being a gracious Fraulein. A curious
contrast to her Teutonic voracity was the temperance of a young Latin
swell, imaginably from Trieste, who sat long over his small coffee and
cigarette, and tranquilly mused upon the pages of an Italian newspaper.
At another table there was a very noisy lady, short and fat, in flowing
draperies of white, who commanded a sallow family of South-Americans,
and loudly harangued them in South-American Spanish; she flared out in
a picture which nowhere lacked strong effects; and in her background
lurked a mysterious black face and figure, ironically subservient to the
old man, the mild boy, and the pretty young girl in the middle distance
of the family group.

Amidst the shows of a hardened