s to a work that was one of the glories of literature. The
glory was happily unobjectionable, and the little charges were candid;
for herself she had travelled that road and she merely waited on their
innocence. But she referred in due time to their absent friend, whom
it was clear they should have to give up. "He either won't have got
your note," she said, "or you won't have got his: he has had some kind
of hindrance, and, of course, for that matter, you know, a man never
writes about coming to a box." She spoke as if, with her look, it
might have been Waymarsh who had written to the youth, and the latter's
face showed a mixture of austerity and anguish. She went on however as
if to meet this. "He's far and away, you know, the best of them."

"The best of whom, ma'am?"

"Why of all the long procession--the boys, the girls, or the old men
and old women as they sometimes really are; the hope, as one may say,
of our country. They've all passed, year after year; but there has
been no one in particular I've ever wanted to stop. I feel--don't
YOU?--that I want to stop little Bilham; he's so exactly right as he
is." She continued to talk to Waymarsh. "He's too delightful. If
he'll only not spoil it! But they always WILL; they always do; they
always have."

"I don't think Waymarsh knows," Strether said after a moment, "quite
what it's open to Bilham to spoil."

"It can't be a good American," Waymarsh lucidly enough replied; "for it
didn't strike me the young man had developed much in THAT shape."

"Ah," Miss Gostrey sighed, "the name of the good American is as easily
given as taken away! What IS it, to begin with, to BE one, and what's
the extraordinary hurry? Surely nothing that's so pressing was ever so
little defined. It's such an order, really, that before we cook you
the dish we must at least have your receipt. Besides the poor chicks
have time! What I've seen so often spoiled," she pursued, "is the happy
attitude itself, the state of faith and--what shall I call it?--the
sense of beauty. You're right about him"--she now took in Strether;
"little Bilham has them to a charm, we must keep little Bilham along."
Then she was all again for Waymarsh. "The others have all wanted so
dreadfully to do something, and they've gone and done it in too many
cases indeed. It leaves them never the same afterwards; the charm's
always somehow broken. Now HE, I think, you know, really won't. He
won't do the least dread