ement to you about it.
And if he both wants to marry her and is on good terms with them why
isn't he 'free'?"

Strether, responsively, wondered indeed. "Perhaps the girl herself
doesn't like him."

"Then why does he speak of them to you as he does?"

Strether's mind echoed the question, but also again met it. "Perhaps
it's with the mother he's on good terms."

"As against the daughter?"

"Well, if she's trying to persuade the daughter to consent to him, what
could make him like the mother more? Only," Strether threw out, "why
shouldn't the daughter consent to him?"

"Oh," said Miss Gostrey, "mayn't it be that every one else isn't quite
so struck with him as you?"

"Doesn't regard him you mean as such an 'eligible' young man? Is that
what I've come to?" he audibly and rather gravely sought to know.
"However," he went on, "his marriage is what his mother most
desires--that is if it will help. And oughtn't ANY marriage to help?
They must want him"--he had already worked it out--"to be better off.
Almost any girl he may marry will have a direct interest in his taking
up his chances. It won't suit HER at least that he shall miss them."

Miss Gostrey cast about. "No--you reason well! But of course on the
other hand there's always dear old Woollett itself."

"Oh yes," he mused--"there's always dear old Woollett itself."

She waited a moment. "The young lady mayn't find herself able to
swallow THAT quantity. She may think it's paying too much; she may
weigh one thing against another."

Strether, ever restless in such debates, took a vague turn "It will all
depend on who she is. That of course--the proved ability to deal with
dear old Woollett, since I'm sure she does deal with it--is what makes
so strongly for Mamie."

"Mamie?"

He stopped short, at her tone, before her; then, though seeing that it
represented not vagueness, but a momentary embarrassed fulness, let his
exclamation come. "You surely haven't forgotten about Mamie!"

"No, I haven't forgotten about Mamie," she smiled. "There's no doubt
whatever that there's ever so much to be said for her. Mamie's MY
girl!" she roundly declared.

Strether resumed for a minute his walk. "She's really perfectly
lovely, you know. Far prettier than any girl I've seen over here yet."

"That's precisely on what I perhaps most build." And she mused a
moment in her friend's way. "I should positively like to take her in
hand!"

He humoured the fancy, t