ear of nothing but his success. Mother wrote me that
people are frantic for him; and," said the girl after an instant, "do
you know what Cousin Jane wrote me?"

"What WOULD she now? I'm trying to think."

Nanda relieved him of this effort. "Why that mother has transferred to
him all the scruples she felt--'even to excess'--in MY time, about what
we might pick up among you all that wouldn't be good for us."

"That's a neat one for ME!" Vanderbank declared. "And I like your talk
about your antediluvian 'time.'"

"Oh it's all over."

"What exactly is it," Vanderbank presently demanded, "that you describe
in that manner?"

"Well, my little hour. And the danger of picking up."

"There's none of it here?"

Nanda appeared frankly to judge. "No--because, really, Tishy, don't you
see? is natural. We just talk."

Vanderbank showed his interest. "Whereas at your mother's--?"

"Well, you were all afraid."

Vanderbank laughed straight out. "Do you mind my telling her that?"

"Oh she knows it. I've heard her say herself you were."

"Ah _I_ was," he concurred. "You know we've spoken of that before."

"I'm speaking now of all of you," said Nanda. "But it was she who was
most so, for she tried--I know she did, she told me so--to control you.
And it was when, you were most controlled--!"

Van's amusement took it up. "That we were most detrimental?"

"Yes, because of course what's so awfully unutterable is just what we
most notice. Tishy knows that," Nanda wonderfully observed.

As the reflexion of her tone might have been caught by an observer
in Vanderbank's face it was in all probability caught by his
interlocutress, who superficially, however, need have recognised
there--what was all she showed--but the right manner of waiting for
dinner. "The better way then is to dash right in? That's what our friend
here does?"

"Oh you know what she does!" the girl replied as with a sudden drop of
interest in the question. She turned at the moment to the opening of the
door.

It was Tishy who at last appeared, and her guest had his greeting ready.
"We're talking of the delicate matters as to which you think it's better
to dash right in; but I'm bound to say your inviting a hungry man to
dinner doesn't appear to be one of them."

The sign of Tishy Grendon--as it had been often called in a society in
which variety of reference had brought to high perfection, for usual
safety, the sense of signs--was a retarded facial glimmer