is_ easy, with all that money. Besides,
Mrs. Hawthorne really is something of a dear. After all, if people make
much of one, one is pretty sure to like them. Haven't you found it so,
Gerald?"

"I don't know. I am trying to remember if there is anybody who has made
much of me."

"_We_ have made much of you."

"And don't think I temperately like you. I adore you all, as you well
know. You're the only people I do. By that sign there has been nobody
else kind enough to make much of me."

"You're so bad lately, Gerald; that's why," Mrs. Foss affectionately
chide him. "You never go anywhere. You neglect your friends. What have
you been doing with yourself? Is it work?"

"No; not more than usual. I work, but I'm not exactly absorbed--obsessed
by it. I don't know--" He seemed to search, and after a moment summed up
his vague difficulties: "It seems a case for quoting 'Hamlet.'" He was
bending forward, his elbows resting on his knees, as they could do
easily, his chair being low and his thin legs long. His thin, long hands
played with that slender cane of his, which he had set down and taken up
again, while he tried to recall the passage, and mumbled snatches of it:
"'This goodly firmament--congregation of vapors--Man delights not
me--no, nor'--the rest of it."

"But it won't do, Gerald dear; it won't do at all," Mrs. Foss addressed
him anxiously, between scolding and coaxing. "Shake yourself, boy! Force
yourself a little; it will be good for you. _Make_ yourself go to
places till this mood is past. What is it? Bad humor, spleen,
hypochondria? It doesn't belong with one of your age. We miss you
terribly, dear. Here we have had two of our Fridays, and you have not
been. And we have always counted on you. Charming men are scarce at
parties the world over. The Hunts have begun their little dances, too.
One used to see you there. And at Madame Bentivoglio's. She was asking
what had become of you. Promise, Gerald, that we shall see you at our
next Friday! We want to make it a nice, gay season. Will you promise?
Oh, here's Lily. Why didn't you tell us, Lily, that Gerald had come to
see us when we were out?"

A long-legged, limp-looking little girl with spectacles had come in. A
minute before she had been passing the door on her way to walk, and
catching the sound of a male voice in the drawing-room, insisted upon
listening till she had made sure whose it was. At the name Gerald she
had pulled away from her governess and burst