r with a warmer show of interest than I had been
able to provoke.

It seemed, indeed, opportune to remember at the moment that, while this
alleged Little Miss was the daughter of Miss Caroline, she was
likewise--and even more palpably, as I could note by fugitive swift
glimpses of her face--the daughter of a gentleman whose metal had been
often tried; one who had won his reputation as much by self-possession
under difficulties as by the militant spirit that incurred them.

"Kate has little of the Peavey in her,--she is every inch a Lansdale,"
Miss Caroline found occasion to say; while I, thus provided with an
excuse to look, remarked to myself that her inches, while not excessive,
were unusually meritorious.

"Worse than that--she's a Jere Lansdale," was my response, though I
tactfully left it unuttered for an "Indeed?" that seemed less emotional.
I could voice my deeper conviction not more explicitly than by saying
further to Miss Caroline, "Perhaps that explains why she has the effect
of making her mother seem positively immature."

"My mother _is_ positively immature," remarked the daughter, with the
air of telling something she had found out long since.

"Then perhaps the other is the false effect," I ventured. "It is your
mother's immaturity that makes you seem so--" I thought it kind to
hesitate for the word, but Miss Lansdale said, again confidently:--

"Oh, but I really _am_," and this with a finality that seemed to close
the incident.

Her voice had the warm little roughness of a thrush's, which sings
through a throat that is loosely strung with wires of soft gold.

"In _my_ day," began Miss Caroline; but here I rebelled, no longer
perceiving any good reason to be overborne by her daughter. I could
endure only a certain amount of that.

"Your day is to-day," I interrupted, "and to-morrow and many to-morrows.
You are a woman bereft of all her yesterdays. Let your daughter have had
_her_ day--let her have come to an incredible maturity. But you stay
here in to-day with me. We won't be fit companions for her, but she
shall not lack for company. Uncle Jerry Honeycutt is now ninety-four,
and he has a splendid new ear-trumpet--he will be rarely diverting for
Miss Lansdale."

But the daughter remained as indifferent to taunts as she had been to my
friendly advances. It occurred to me now that her self-possession was
remarkable. It was little short of threatening if one regarded her too
closely. I wondered