hat it was impossible to wink at poppa, or in any way to give him
the assurance that my regard for him was unimpaired. There are things
that can't be passed over with a smile in one's poppa without doing him
harm, and this was one of them. It was a regular manifesto, and I felt
exactly like Lord Salisbury. I couldn't take him seriously, and yet I
had to tell him to come on, if he wanted to, and devote his spare time
to learning the language of diplomacy. So I merely bowed with what
magnificence I could command and filed it, so to speak; and walked to
the other side of the deck, leaving poppa to his conscience and momma
and his Aunt Caroline. I left him with confidence, not knowing which
would give him the worst time. Mrs. Portheris began it, before I was out
of earshot. "For an American parent," she said blandly, "it strikes me,
Joshua, that you are a little severe."

I found Mr. Mafferton interfering, as I expected, with Dicky and Isabel
in their appreciation of the west shore. He was pointing out the Villa
Carlotta at Caddenabbia, and explaining the beauties of the sculptures
there and dwelling on the tone of blue in the immediate Alps and
reminding them that the elder Pliny once picked wild flowers on these
banks, and generally making himself the intelligent nuisance that nature
intended him to be. In spite of it Isabel was radiant. She said a number
of things with the greatest ease; one saw that language, after all, was
not difficult to her, she only wanted practice and an untroubled mind. I
looked at Dicky and saw that a weight had been removed from his, and it
was impossible to avoid the conclusion that peace and satisfaction in
this life would date for these two, if all went well for the next few
days, from the Lake of Como. But all could not be relied upon to go well
so long as Mr. Mafferton hovered, quoting Claudian on the mulberry tree,
upon the brink of a proposal, so I took him away to translate his
quotation for me in the stern, which naturally suggested the past and
its emotions. We could now refer quite sympathetically to the altogether
irretrievable and gone by, and Mr. Mafferton was able to mention Lady
Torquilan without any trace of his air that she was a person, poor dear,
that brought embarrassment with her. Indeed, I sometimes thought he
dragged her in. I asked him, in appropriate phrases, of course, whether
he had decided to accept Mrs. Portheris's daughter, and he fixed
mournful eyes upon me and sa