"They're awfully good fun," Leslie started loyally in to make up for anything she had said which might seem to savor of mockery or dispraise. "One enjoys being with them, if they aren't our usual sort. They are in good spirits, really good--good spirits with roots to them. And that's such a treat these days!" From which it was supposable that Leslie had been living in circles where the gaiety was hollow. The suggestion did not escape Gerald. But, then, Leslie, just turned twenty-four, was rather given to judging _these days_ as if she remembered something less modern, an affectation found piquant by her friends in a particularly young-looking, blond girl with a short nose. Gerald might have hoped that her sigh meant nothing had not Leslie, awake to the implication of her remark as soon as she had made it, gone hurriedly on to call attention away from it. "Yes, it's pleasant to be with them. It's a change. The world seems simple and life easy. Life _is_ easy, with all that money. Besides, Mrs. Hawthorne really is something of a dear. After all, if people make much of one, one is pretty sure to like them. Haven't you found it so, Gerald?" "I don't know. I am trying to remember if there is anybody who has made much of me." "_We_ have made much of you." "And don't think I temperately like you. I adore you all, as you well know. You're the only people I do. By that sign there has been nobody else kind enough to make much of me." "You're so bad lately, Gerald; that's why," Mrs. Foss affectionately chide him. "You never go anywhere. You neglect your friends. What have you been doing with yourself? Is it work?" "No; not more than usual. I work, but I'm not exactly absorbed--obsessed by it. I don't know--" He seemed to search, and after a moment summed up his vague difficulties: "It seems a case for quoting 'Hamlet.'" He was bending forward, his elbows resting on his knees, as they could do easily, his chair being low and his thin legs long. His thin, long hands played with that slender cane of his, which he had set down and taken up again, while he tried to recall the passage, and mumbled snatches of it: "'This goodly firmament--congregation of vapors--Man delights not me--no, nor'--the rest of it."