He laughs too. "Poor Perugia! I think it would have blushed unseen for a good many more years if you had not begun to doubt the efficiency of my chaperonage. Confess! you have come to look after the precious baby-boy, have not you?" His tone is, as he himself feels, not quite a pleasant one; but the mother is scarcely more prone to take offence than the son; and she answers with an amiably hasty disclaimer: "It was not that I felt the least want of confidence in you--you must not think that; but--but I had one of my presentiments! you know that I am always a little superstitious; and three nights running an owl came and hooted quite close under my window!" "As long as I have known your wood, it has had owls; and as long as I have known them, they have hooted." "In the wood, yes, of course, and I like to hear them; but this one was close under my window." Jim's only answer is to lift his hands and shoulders in protest against his friend's weak-mindedness. "I had quite made up my mind that something had happened," continues she, not much abashed by his scorn; "and it was the greatest relief when I first caught sight of him at the station yesterday, looking just as usual, a little thinner perhaps--does not he strike you as a little thin? Has he been weighed lately? He gives me the idea of having lost a pound or two since I last saw him. Is there a weighing-machine in the hotel?" "It will be very easy to ascertain." "And how is Amelia?"--her cheerful eyes resting in friendly and half-inquisitive interest on his sombre face. "Amelia is very well, thank you." "Amelia Wilson still?" "Yes." "For how long?"--laughing--"another ten years, I suppose?" "For three months, I believe; we are to be married as soon as they return to England." "You do not say so?"--with an accent of lively and delighted incredulity--"hurrah! poor Amelia! '_Tout vient à point à qui sait attendre_;' and she has _su attendre_ with a vengeance, has not she?" "She is not going to _attendre_ any more," replies Jim dryly. "Then I shall have to give you a present, I suppose!" cries Mrs. Byng, still with that delighted accent. "Something useful, I have no doubt. I feel sure that Amelia would like something useful; why should not we choose it to-day? Florence is an ideal place for buying presents; do you think that Amelia would spare you to me for a whole morning?" Jim hesitates. It is not that he has any doubt as to Amelia's cheerful renunciation of any portion of his time that he may see fit to abstract from her; but the occupation suggested--that of squiring Mrs. Byng--is not that to which he had purposed devoting his forenoon. She sees his unreadiness to answer, and attributes it to a wrong cause. "Amelia will not?" cries she in a tone of surprise and disappointment. "Well, I could not have believed it of her! Not even if you told her that it is on purpose to buy her a present?"