"Oh?" said Amory. Mr. Edmondson might have been the historian of modern journalism, looking back. He continued. "'Uge circulation it must have; why, I've known 'em get through as many as thirty-eight quires in a single morning at our place alone; _some_body must make some money out of it! I forget what their divvy is.--But I wonder you don't get fed-up with pictures for all that. It'll be like me dealing out tickets instead of cards for whist." "Almost the same," said Amory. Mr. Edmondson looked at her for a moment suspiciously, as if he thought she was getting at him. Not very long before, Mr. Edmondson would have resented being got at by girls, especially in his green waistcoat; but he had grown soberer and more tolerant since then. He went avuncularly on. "What d'you suppose Miss Addams is going to spring on us? I guessed French blind-man's bluff for a start, with word-making and whist to cool off a bit on: but Mrs. D. says forfeits.... What, are you off?" "Yes, I've a letter to write." "That's the style: business before pleasure. I hope you write in a good light always: nothing worse for the eyes than writing in a bad light. It's no good wishing you had your eyesight back again when it's gone: the thing is to take care of it while you're young. I saw a bit in the paper the other day--it was about reading in bed----" But Amory fled. As she dropped the _portière_ of the drawing-room door behind her she encountered her aunt on the landing. She stopped. She was very angry with her aunt; she felt that her aunt was making of her, too, a laughing-stock. She turned her shallow brook-brown eyes, but hardly her head, as she spoke. "I do think----" she began impetuously, and stopped. She stopped out of the sense that these things ought not to have to be said. In making it necessary for Amory to remark on them at all her aunt was putting her into a false position. Miss Geraldine Towers had her hand on the knob of the door. She smiled, but did not turn the knob. "What, dear?" she asked amiably. "I do think you needn't set them all talking the way you do. You might think of me a bit. Really, it's rather much sometimes." For a moment Miss Towers turned pink, then she laughed. She was plump and personable; her new way of doing her hair had taken ten years off her age and if her high lace collar was rather tight and did cut her a little under her second chin, well, we all have our troubles, and there are worse ones than plumpness. She straightened her wisteria-coloured satin blouse so that the waist above the tailor-made fawn skirt looked its smallest, and tilted her laughing head back so that it seemed to rock on the two points of her collar-whalebones as if they had been gimballs.