smiled as if it were the most natural thing in the world for that
cross-grained egotist to do a thing like that. He did it rather
gracefully, I admit; but a Boston man would have done it just as well,
if he had only thought of it.

Of late Mr. Flint has taken to dropping in once or twice a week of an
evening to play whist,--he and Winifred against her father and me. Now
I like to beat as well as any one; but I do like some show of
organized resistance, and this young man's playing is what I call
impertinently poor, as if he did not think it worth while to try.
Winifred seems just as well satisfied to be beaten as to beat, and the
Professor takes a guileless and childlike satisfaction in his triumph
which is quite pitiable. I take pains to let Mr. Flint see that I at
least am not taken in; but he only smiles in that exasperatingly
non-committal way of his, as if it mattered little enough to him what
I thought one way or the other. After the game is over he gets a
chance for a few minutes' talk with Winifred while I am hunting up my
knitting and her father his pipe, and it is my belief that it's just
those few minutes that he looks forward to all the evening, while he
is ignoring his partner's trump-signal and leading from his weak suit.

Winifred has caught a very annoying trick of turning to him on all
occasions, as if waiting to know what he thought before making up her
mind. Altogether I don't like the look of things at all.

Of course there was no getting out of inviting Mr. Flint to the little
birthday party which we were planning for Nora Costello. To tell the
truth, nobody but me seemed to want to get out of it. Professor
Anstice says he is the most agreeable man that comes to the house, and
when I confided to him that I was afraid Winifred would fall in love
with him, he answered: "She might do worse. She might do much worse."
That was all the consolation I got in that quarter, and with Winifred
herself it was as bad. I thought it might do good to recall some of
her early impressions, which seem to have changed so mightily of late.

"Don't you remember," I said, "how you called him a refrigerator?"

"Did I?" she said with a little laugh. "Well, he was rather frigid in
those days."

"Yes, and you said how disagreeable his manners were, and how
thoughtless he was of every one but himself."

At this Winifred colored up as if they hadn't been her own very words.
"If I said it," she answered with a little tos