fessor Packard standing up before that fireplace and
saying, 'Helen,' says he, 'no gentleman is worthy the name who doesn't
know his Horace.' 'Stuff,' says I, 'that's utter nonsense. You might as
well say a gentlemen is not worthy of the name unless he knows his
French for "fiddle-dee-dee"----like the Red Queen,'" and still knitting
busily, she rocked with laughter.

Tom dropped into a chair beside her, threw one leg over the arm, and,
pipe in hand, gazed at her affectionately. She was about the age his own
mother would have been, he thought, in the immediate neighbourhood of
sixty. But his own mother, who he knew had become reconciled to the life
of Ephesus, could never have arrived at sixty with the imperious
disregard for convention that was so perfectly Mrs. Norris's. Upon her
face at present, as she looked down at her knitting, was a smiling
benignity that would have recommended itself to the Virgin at Chartres;
and at the same time her hair--what modest growth there was left--was
uncurling itself from behind and threatening to pull down the whole
structure after it. It was perfect, Tom told himself, and were he a
sculptor commissioned to make her bust, he would do her just like that.

"Nancy, I sometimes think, is the worst person in the world to look
after Henry. It's bad for her and bad for him. What he ought to do is to
go out and get another wife and leave Nancy alone to do as she pleases.
I have a good mind to take her with me to Athens next winter myself.
What with Mrs. Robert Lee-Satterlee taking her to California this
winter and my taking her to Athens next, Henry will have to get
married."

There had been rumours abroad lately that Henry had about arrived at the
same conclusion himself and that Mary Norris was receiving serious
consideration as a candidate, but there was nothing in Mrs. Norris's
manner that suggested a knowledge of it, and Tom correctly concluded
that it was just another of those idle rumours that live their luxurious
day in Faculty Row.

"Oh, my no," said Tom, "that wouldn't do at all. Why, another marriage
would completely upset Henry's System that he's always talking so much
about. It's almost certain she couldn't stand it, you know, and then
where would Henry be? Suppose, for example, that she forgot to have his
senna tea for him at night or didn't care about playing cribbage for
three-quarters of an hour after dinner? Now Nancy, apparently, gives
perfect satisfaction. She adores