low, mother, and as he's accepted
he will have to go with you, and there won't be any talk. But, as I
remarked before, I am not going."

"Why aren't you going, I should like to know?"

"Because I don't like the company."

"What do you mean? Have you got anything against Mr. Breckon?"

"He's insipid, but as long as Ellen don't mind it I don't care. I object
to Mr. Trannel!"

"Why?"

"I don't see why I should have to tell you. If I said I liked him you
might want to know, but it seems to me that my not liking him is--my
not liking him is my own affair." There was a kind of logic in this that
silenced Mrs. Kenton for the moment. In view of her advantage Lottie
relented so far as to add, "I've found out something about him."

Mrs. Kenton was imperative in her alarm. "What is it?" she demanded.

Lottie answered, obliquely: "Well, I didn't leave The Hague to get rid
of them, and then take up with one of them at Scheveningen."

"One of what?"

"COOK'S TOURISTS, if you must know, mother. Mr. Trannel, as you call
him, is a Cook's tourist, and that's the end of it. I have got no use
for him from this out."

Mrs. Kenton was daunted, and not for the first time, by her daughter's
superior knowledge of life. She could put Boyne down sometimes, though
not always, when he attempted to impose a novel code of manners or
morals upon her, but she could not cope with Lottie. In the present case
she could only ask, "Well?"

"Well, they're the cheapest of the cheap. He actually showed me his
coupons, and tried to put me down with the idea that everybody used
them. But I guess he found it wouldn't work. He said if you were not
personally conducted it was all right."

"Now, Lottie, you have got to tell me just what you mean," said Mrs.
Kenton, and from having stood during this parley, she sat down to hear
Lottie out at her leisure. But if there was anything more difficult than
for Lottie to be explicit it was to make her be so, and in the end
Mrs. Kenton was scarcely wiser than she was at the beginning to her
daughter's reasons. It appeared that if you wanted to be cheap you could
travel with those coupons, and Lottie did not wish to be cheap, or have
anything to do with those who were. The Kentons had always held up their
heads, and if Ellen had chosen to disgrace them with Bittridge, Dick had
made it all right, and she at least was not going to do anything that
she would be ashamed of. She was going to stay at home, and have h