punch each other, in your English fashion, in the sides, and
say to each other in corners that my poor darling has 'come out.' Je
crois bien, she has come out! I married her--I don't mind saying it
now--exactly that she SHOULD come out, and I should be mightily ashamed
of every one concerned if she hadn't. I didn't marry her, I give you to
believe, that she should stay 'in,' and if any of you think to frighten
Mitchy with it I imagine you'll do so as little as you frighten ME. If
it has taken her a very short time--as Harold so vividly puts it--to
which of you did I ever pretend, I should like to know, that it would
take her a very long one? I dare say there are girls it would have taken
longer, just as there are certainly others who wouldn't have required so
much as an hour. It surely isn't news to you that if some young persons
among us all are very stupid and others very wise, MY dear child
was never either, but only perfectly bred and deliciously clever. Ah
THAT--rather! If she's so clever that you don't know what to do with her
it's scarcely HER fault. But add to it that Mitchy's very kind, and you
have the whole thing. What more do you want?"

Mrs. Brook, who looked immensely struck, replied with the promptest
sympathy, yet as if there might have been an alternative. "I don't
think"--and her eyes appealed to the others--"that we want ANY more, do
we? than the whole thing."

"Gracious, I should hope not!" her husband remarked as privately as
before to Vanderbank. "Jane--for a mixed company--does go into it."

Vanderbank, for a minute and with a special short arrest, took in the
circle. "Should you call us 'mixed'? There's only ONE girl."

Edward Brookenham glanced at his daughter. "Yes, but I wish there were
more."

"DO you?" And Vanderbank's laugh at this odd view covered, for a little,
the rest of the talk. But when he again began to follow no victory had
yet been snatched.

It was Mrs. Brook naturally who rattled the standard. "When you say,
dearest, that we don't know what to 'do' with Aggie's cleverness, do you
quite allow for the way we bow down before it and worship it? I don't
quite see what else we--in here--can do with it, even though we HAVE
gathered that, just over there, Petherton's finding for it a different
application. We can only each in our way do our best. Don't therefore
succumb, Jane, to the delusive harm of a grievance. There would be
nothing in it. You haven't got one. The beauty of the