alian
turns and intonations. His partook of the same defect, but in a lesser
degree.

"But I have come," he stood up for himself, "and you were all out except
Lily. Didn't she tell you I was there? We had a long talk. She told me
her plans for the future. She is going to keep a school for poor
children. We discussed their diet and their flannels and every point of
their bringing-up. We invented things to do on holidays to give them a
good time. There is only one thing I can see leaving a doubt of this
school coming into being. It is that Lily has moments, she confessed to
me, of thinking almost equally well of a castle with a moat and
drawbridge and a page to walk before her carrying her prayer-book on a
cushion. She's a funny young one."

"It's partly Fraeulein."

"How are they all?"

"Well, thank you. At least, I suppose they are well." She gave a slight
laugh at the humor of this. "You could hardly imagine how little I see
of them."

"What has happened?"

"They have been going around with some new people, some Americans. They
have been helping them to shop, and showing them the way one does things
over here. Mother, you know, is always so ready."

"Your mother is a dear."

"Leslie is just like her. But I am sure they both enjoy it, too. They
have not been home to lunch for a week."

"And you?"

"Oh, I am not needed where there are already two who do the thing so
much better than I could. I have not even seen the people. My day is
very full, you know. Piano and singing-lessons, and I am painting again
this winter, with Galletti, and I am going to a course of
_conferenze_ on Italian literature. That involves a lot of reading.
There are, besides, the other, the usual things, the--" Her voice stuck;
then, as she went on, deepened with the depth of a suppressed
impatience. "I wish one might be allowed not to do what is meant for
pleasure unless one takes pleasure in it. But going to teas and parties
is apparently as much a duty as school or church. Mother and Leslie at
least seem to think it so for me."

"I see their point, Brenda dear, don't you?" He was not looking at her
as with a gentle brotherliness he spoke this.

"You don't go to many parties yourself, Gerald."

"I am afraid nothing I do is fit to be an example to anybody. But it
doesn't matter about me. About you it does. I can't say to you all I
think. It would sound fulsome, and from such an old chum might make you
laugh. But, being as you are