ia panted.

"Is it pleasant at Nice? Is it very gay? Isn't it very hot now?" Francie
rather limply asked.

"Oh it's all right. But I haven't come up here to crow about Nice, have
I?"

"Why not, if we want you to?"--Delia spoke up.

Mr. Flack looked at her for a moment very hard, in the whites of the
eyes; then he replied, turning back to her sister: "Anything YOU like,
Miss Francie. With you one subject's as good as another. Can't we sit
down? Can't we be comfortable?" he added.

"Comfortable? of course we can!" cried Delia, but she remained erect
while Francie sank upon the sofa again and their companion took
possession of the nearest chair.

"Do you remember what I told you once, that the people WILL have the
plums?" George Flack asked with a hard buoyancy of the younger girl.

She looked an instant as if she were trying to recollect what he had
told her; and then said, more remotely, "DID father write to you?"

"Of course he did. That's why I'm here."

"Poor father, sometimes he doesn't know WHAT to do!" Delia threw in with
violence.

"He told me the Reverberator has raised a breeze. I guessed that for
myself when I saw the way the papers here were after it. That thing will
go the rounds, you'll see. What brought me was learning from him that
they HAVE got their backs up."

"What on earth are you talking about?" Delia Dosson rang out.

Mr. Flack turned his eyes on her own as he had done a moment before;
Francie sat there serious, looking hard at the carpet. "What game are
you trying, Miss Delia? It ain't true YOU care what I wrote, is it?" he
pursued, addressing himself again to Francie.

After a moment she raised her eyes. "Did you write it yourself?"

"What do you care what he wrote--or what does any one care?" Delia again
interposed.

"It has done the paper more good than anything--every one's so
interested," said Mr. Flack in the tone of reasonable explanation. "And
you don't feel you've anything to complain of, do you?" he added to
Francie kindly.

"Do you mean because I told you?"

"Why certainly. Didn't it all spring out of that lovely drive and that
walk up in the Bois we had--when you took me up to see your portrait?
Didn't you understand that I wanted you to know that the public would
appreciate a column or two about Mr. Waterlow's new picture, and about
you as the subject of it, and about your being engaged to a member of
the grand old monde, and about what was going on in the grand o