, the thing was
so obviously untrue; either there must be hardly any bushes or hillocks
in those parts or the country must be fearfully overstocked with
yellow-hammers. The thing scarcely seemed worth telling such a lie
about. And the page-boy stood there, with his sleekly brushed and
parted hair, and his air of chaste and callous indifference to the
desires and passions of the world. Eleanor hated boys, and she would
have liked to have whipped this one long and often. It was perhaps the
yearning of a woman who had no children of her own.

She turned at random to another paragraph. "Lie quietly concealed in
the fern and bramble in the gap by the old rowan tree, and you may see,
almost every evening during early summer, a pair of lesser whitethroats
creeping up and down the nettles and hedge-growth that mask their
nesting-place."

The insufferable monotony of the proposed recreation! Eleanor would
not have watched the most brilliant performance at His Majesty's
Theatre for a single evening under such uncomfortable circumstances,
and to be asked to watch lesser whitethroats creeping up and down a
nettle "almost every evening" during the height of the season struck
her as an imputation on her intelligence that was positively offensive.
Impatiently she transferred her attention to the dinner menu, which the
boy had thoughtfully brought in as an alternative to the more solid
literary fare. "Rabbit curry," met her eye, and the lines of
disapproval deepened on her already puckered brow. The cook was a
great believer in the influence of environment, and nourished an
obstinate conviction that if you brought rabbit and curry-powder
together in one dish a rabbit curry would be the result. And Clovis
and the odious Bertie van Tahn were coming to dinner. Surely, thought
Eleanor, if Arlington knew how much she had had that day to try her, he
would refrain from joke-making.

At dinner that night it was Eleanor herself who mentioned the name of a
certain statesman, who may be decently covered under the disguise of X.

"X," said Arlington Stringham, "has the soul of a meringue."

It was a useful remark to have on hand, because it applied equally well
to four prominent statesmen of the day, which quadrupled the
opportunities for using it.

"Meringues haven't got souls," said Eleanor's mother.

"It's a mercy that they haven't," said Clovis; "they would be always
losing them, and people like my aunt would get up missions t