f a
strained interpretation, but that didn't prevent Delia from placing
it before her father several times an hour. It mattered little that he
should remark in return that he didn't see what good it could do Mr.
Flack that Francie--and he and Delia, for all he could guess--should be
disgusted with him: to Mr. Dosson's mind that was such a queer way of
reasoning. Delia maintained that she understood perfectly, though
she couldn't explain--and at any rate she didn't want the manoeuvring
creature to come flying back from Nice. She didn't want him to know
there had been a scandal, that they had a grievance against him, that
any one had so much as heard of his article or cared what he published
or didn't publish; above all she didn't want him to know that the
Proberts had cooled off. She didn't want him to dream he could have had
such effects. Mixed up with this high rigour on Miss Dosson's part was
the oddest secret complacency of reflexion that in consequence of what
Mr. Flack HAD published the great American community was in a position
to know with what fine folks Francie and she were associated. She
hoped that some of the people who used only to call when they were "off
to-morrow" would take the lesson to heart.

While she glowed with this consolation as well as with the resentment
for which it was required her father quietly addressed a few words by
letter to their young friend in the south. This communication was not
of a minatory order; it expressed on the contrary the loose sociability
which was the essence of the good gentleman's nature. He wanted to see
Mr. Flack, to talk the whole thing over, and the desire to hold him to
an account would play but a small part in the interview. It commended
itself much more to him that the touchiness of the Proberts should be
a sign of a family of cranks--so little did any experience of his own
match it--than that a newspaper-man had misbehaved in trying to turn out
an attractive piece. As the newspaper-man happened to be the person with
whom he had most consorted for some time back he felt drawn to him in
presence of a new problem, and somehow it didn't seem to Mr. Dosson to
disqualify him as a source of comfort that it was just he who had been
the fountain of injury. The injury wouldn't be there if the Proberts
didn't point to it with a thousand ringers. Moreover Mr. Dosson couldn't
turn his back at such short notice on a man who had smoked so many of
his cigars, ordered so many