ave had something."

"Yes indeed, she had something--and she always has her intense
cleverness. She knows thoroughly how. They do it tremendously well."

"Tremendously well," Mr. Longdon intelligently echoed. "But a house in
Buckingham Crescent, with the way they seem to have built through to all
sorts of other places--?"

"Oh they're all right," Vanderbank soothingly dropped.

"One likes to feel that of people with whom one has dined. There are
four children?" his friend went on.

"The older boy, whom you saw and who in his way is a wonder, the older
girl, whom you must see, and two youngsters, male and female, whom you
mustn't."

There might by this time, in the growing interest of their talk, have
been almost nothing too uncanny for Mr. Longdon to fear it. "You mean
the youngsters are--unfortunate?"

"No--they're only, like all the modern young, I think, mysteries,
terrible little baffling mysteries." Vanderbank had found amusement
again--it flickered so from his friend's face that, really at moments to
the point of alarm, his explanations deepened darkness. Then with more
interest he harked back. "I know the thing you just mentioned--the thing
that strikes you as odd." He produced his knowledge quite with elation.
"The talk." Mr. Longdon on this only looked at him in silence and
harder, but he went on with assurance: "Yes, the talk--for we do talk, I
think." Still his guest left him without relief, only fixing him and his
suggestion with a suspended judgement. Whatever the old man was on the
point of saying, however, he disposed of in a curtailed murmur; he had
already turned afresh to the series of portraits, and as he glanced at
another Vanderbank spoke afresh.

"It was very interesting to me to hear from you there, when the ladies
had left us, how many old threads you were prepared to pick up."

Mr. Longdon had paused. "I'm an old boy who remembers the mothers," he
at last replied.

"Yes, you told me how well you remember Mrs. Brookenham's."

"Oh, oh!"--and he arrived at a new subject. "This must be your sister
Mary."

"Yes; it's very bad, but as she's dead--"

"Dead? Dear, dear!"

"Oh long ago"--Vanderbank eased him off. "It's delightful of you," this
informant went on, "to have known also such a lot of MY people."

Mr. Longdon turned from his contemplation with a visible effort. "I
feel obliged to you for taking it so; it mightn't--one never knows--have
amused you. As I told you there, the fi