"Not at all. Really good things." "With passion?" "Well, hardly. With cool correctness. An icicle on Diana's temple--that would be my guess." "An icicle? No wonder the young ladies don't quite fancy him." "I understand he took them all in a lump--so far as he took them at all. Treated them all exactly alike; Hortense was quite scornful when she brought up my lunch-tray. Of course that's no way for a man to do." "On the contrary. For certain purposes it might be a very good way." "'On the contrary,' if you like; since frost may perform the effects of fire. Medora herself is beginning to see him as a tall, white candle, burning in some niche or at some shrine. Sir Galahad--or something of that sort." Randolph grimaced at this. "Oh, misery! I hope she hasn't mentioned her impression to _him_! Imagine whether a man would enjoy being told a thing like that. I hope, I'm sure, that no 'Belle Dame sans Merci' will get on his tracks!" "If he goes in too much for 'palely loitering' he may be snatched." "Poor fellow! They'd better leave him to his studies and his students. He has his own way to make, I presume, and will need all his energies to get ahead. For, as some one has said, 'There are no tea-houses on the road to Parnassus.' Neither do tea-fights boost a man toward the Porch or Academe." "He's going in for teas?" "I won't say that. But it was at a tea that I met him. A trigonometry tea at little Mrs. Ryder's." "You've seen him then. You have the advantage of me. What's he like?" "Oh, he has points in his favor. He has looks; a trim figure, even if spare; well-squared shoulders; and manners with a breezy, original tang. The kind of young fellow that people are likely enough to like." "What kind of manners did he have for you?" "Well, there you rather get me. He called me 'sir,' with a touch of deference; yet somehow I felt as if I were standing too close to an electric fan." "Yes, even when they indulge a show of deference, they contrive to blow our gray hairs about our wrinkled temples." "Don't talk about gray hairs. You have none; and mine are not always seen at first glance." "Medora begins to tax me with a few. Don't you see any?" "Not one. I concentrate on my own. Tush, you're only forty-seven." "Or fifty-seven, or sixty-seven, or seventy-seven...." Foster adjusted his green shade and attempted an easier disposition of his twisted limbs on the couch. "Well, forty-seven, as you suggest,--as you insist. How old is this young fellow?" "Twenty-four or twenty-five." "Well, they can make us seem either younger or older. That rests with ourselves. It's all in how we take them, I expect." "Better take them so as to make ourselves younger." "Then the other question." "How they take us?" "Yes. We're lucky, in this day and generation, if they take us at all." "You may be right," assented Randolph ruefully. "Yet there are gleams of hope. The more thoughtful among them have a kind of condescending pity to bestow----"