y
exquisite taste and reticence in this matter. Only the other day in
the Knickerbocker Club I overheard some men talking. And one of them,
in a voice which I did not care for, said "Archibald Mannering--damn!"
And conveyed without other word or qualification than the tone of his
voice, that he had very little use for me. Well, I can thank God for
putting into the world some other people who have not that man's
clearsightedness and excellent powers for passing judgment upon his
fellow men.

So the man gave me his name and took other liberties with me, and the
woman gave me her watch to break (I broke it) and took other liberties,
and a second woman who called herself Nana took still other liberties
with me--liberties which made me furiously angry at the time, and which
even now would make me blush.

Sometimes I was sorry that I had taken the man and the woman to live
with me. At times they bored me. They seemed to me intelligent, and I
had to choose my words carefully, and talk down to them as to a pair of
children. But I got used to them gradually. And I got to like them,
especially the woman. I even formed the habit of forgiving her things
offhand without being asked to--Oh, my dear parents, I am only trying
to poke a little fun at you! And you weren't middle-aged when you came
to live with me. I only imagine that you must have seemed so to a baby
whose eyes had only just come undone. Thirty-five years have rolled
by--bringing, taking, and, alas! leaving behind them cares and
vicissitudes, and still you seem no more than middle-aged to me. You,
father, with your fine, frank weather-beaten face of a county squire
with the merry smile and the wit which makes you so welcome wherever
you go, even those ghosts of sorrow deep in your eyes don't make you
look more than middle-aged. And yet I think no hour of your life
passes in which you don't recall, with a strangling at your throat, how
my little sister, Pitapat, came in from the garden drooping, to you,
almost always to you, when she was in trouble, and climbed and was
lifted into your lap, and cuddled against you--Oh, I can't write the
rest. But I tell you that I, too, sir, have recalled little Pitapat,
and how she died, all on a summer's day, in her "Dada's" arms, and that
the thought of what she was to you, and what such another child might
be to such another man, has twisted even my tough entrails, and caused
me for once, at least, to draw back from a