aid. "But we are so very odd, altogether.
Don't you find us so? We have lived so much abroad. Have you people like
us in America?"

"You are not all alike, surely; so that I don't think I understand your
question. We have no one like your brother--I may go so far as that."

"You have probably more persons like his wife," said Miss Ambient,
smiling.

"I can tell you that better when you have told me about her point of
view."

"Oh, yes--oh, yes. Well, she does n't like his ideas. She doesn't like
them for the child. She thinks them undesirable."

Being quite fresh from the contemplation of some of Mark Ambient's
_arcana_, I was particularly in a position to appreciate this
announcement. But the effect of it was to make me, after staring a
moment, burst into laughter, which I instantly checked when I remembered
that there was a sick child above.

"What has that infant to do with ideas?" I asked "Surely, he can't tell
one from another. Has he read his father's novels?"

"He's very precocious and very sensitive, and his mother thinks she
can't begin to guard him too early." Miss Ambient's head drooped a
little to one side, and her eyes fixed themselves on futurity. Then
suddenly there was a strange alteration in her face; she gave a smile
that was more joyless than her gravity--a conscious, insincere smile,
and added, "When one has children, it's a great responsibility--what one
writes."

"Children are terrible critics," I answered. "I am rather glad I have
n't got any."

"Do you also write then? And in the same style as my brother? And do you
like that style? And do people appreciate it in America? I don't write,
but I think I feel." To these and various other inquiries and remarks
the young lady treated me, till we heard her brother's step in the hall
again, and Mark Ambient reappeared. He looked flushed and serious, and I
supposed that he had seen something to alarm him in the condition of his
child. His sister apparently had another idea; she gazed at him a moment
as if he were a burning ship on the horizon, and simply murmured, "Poor
old Mark!"

"I hope you are not anxious," I said.

"No, but I 'm disappointed. She won't let me in. She has locked the
door, and I 'm afraid to make a noise." I suppose there might have been
something ridiculous in a confession of this kind, but I liked my new
friend so much that for me it did n't detract from his dignity. "She
tells me--from behind the door--that she will le