to Selwyn as to a tactful handling of an
embarrassing situation; and in obedience to this primary requisite I
was calling.

In their private parlor at the Melbourne, pompously furnished, and
bare of all things that make a room reflective of personality, Mrs.
Swink and her daughter were awaiting me on my arrival, and the moment
I met the former all the perversity of which I am possessed rose up
within me, and for the latter I was conscious of sympathy, based on
nothing save intuitive antipathy to her mother. Inwardly I warned
myself to behave, but I wasn't sure I was going to do it.

"Oh, how do you do!" Mrs. Swink, a fat, florid, frizzy person,
waddled toward me with out-stretched and bejeweled hands, and took
mine in hers. "Mr. Thorne told us you would certainly call, and
we've been waiting for you ever since he told us. Charmed to meet
you! This is my daughter Madeleine. Where's Madeleine?" She turned
her short, red neck, bound with velvet, and looked behind her. "Oh,
here she is! Madeleine, this is Miss Wreath. You know all about
Miss Wreath, who's gone to such a queer place to live. Harrie told
us." Two sharp little eyes sunk in nests of embracing flesh winked
confidentially at first me and then her daughter. "Yes, indeed, we
know all about you. Sit down. Madeleine, push a chair up for Miss
Wreath."

"Heath, mother!" The girl called Madeleine turned her pretty,
dissatisfied face toward her mother and then looked at me. "She
never gets names right. She just hits at them and says the first
thing that comes to her mind." Pulling a large chair close to a
table, on which was a vase of American Beauty roses, she waited for
me to take it, then went over to the window and sat beside it.

"Well, everybody's got a mental weakness." Upright in a
blue-brocaded chair, elbows on its gilt arms, mother Swink surveyed
me with scrutinizing calculation, and as she appraised I appraised
also. Full-bosomed of body and short of leg, she looked close kin to
a frog in her tight-fitting purple gown with its iridescent
trimmings, and low-cut neck; and from her silver-buckled slippers to
the crimped and russet-colored transformation on her head, which had
slipped somewhat to one side, my eyes went up and then went down, and
I knew if Harrie ever married her daughter his punishment would begin
on earth.

"Yes, indeed, everybody's got a mental weakness, and I'm thankful
mine's no worse than forgetting names. I oug