"_Bitte?_" said the mother, a broad-shouldered, deep-chested young madonna. "He says," explained Little Miss Grouch, "that it is a beautiful baby, with a wonderful intelligence and unusually keen eyes. What is her name?" "Karl, lady," said the mother. "Let's adopt Karl," said the corrected one, to the Tyro. "We'll come here every day, and bring him nougats and candied violets--" "And some pâté de foie gras, and brandied peaches, and dry Martini cocktails," concluded the Tyro. "And then there'll be a burial at sea. What do you think a baby's stomach is, beautiful--er--example of misplaced generosity? Oranges would be more to the purpose." "Very well, oranges, then. And we'll come twice a day and meet our protégé here." Thus it was arranged in the course of a talk with the mother. She was going back to the Fatherland, she explained, to exhibit her wonderful babe to its grandparents. And if the beautiful lady (here the Tyro shook his head vigorously) thought the captain wouldn't object, the youngster could be handed up over the rail for an occasional visit, and could be warranted to be wholly contented and peaceful. The experiment was tried at once, with such success that the Tyro was presently moved to complain of being wholly supplanted by the newcomer. Thereupon Little Miss Grouch condescended to resume the promenade. "As our acquaintance bids fair to be of indefinite duration--" began the Tyro, when she cut in:-- "Why indefinite?" "Since it is to last until I belie my better judgment and basely recant my opinion as to your looks." "You were nearly caught while we were discussing our protégé. Well, go on." "I think you'd best tell me a little about yourself." "Oh, my life is dull compared with yours," she returned. "Our only interesting problem has been a barn-storming of the doors of New York Society." "And did you break in?" For a moment her eyes opened wide. Then she remembered his confessed ignorance and laughed. With such reservations as she deemed advisable, she sketched briefly for him one of those amazing careers so typical of the swiftly changing social conditions of America. As she talked, he visualized her father, keen, restless, resolute, a money-hunter, who had bred out of a few dollars many dollars, and out of many dollars an overwhelming fortune; her mother, a woman of clean, fine, shrewd, able New England stock (the Tyro, being of the old America, knew the name at once); and the daughter, born to moderate means, in the Middle West, raised luxuriously on the basis of waxing wealth, educated abroad and in America in a school which shields its pupils from every reality of life and forces their growth in a hothouse atmosphere specially adapted to these human orchids, and then presented as a finished product for the acceptance of the New York circle which, by virtue of much painful and expensive advertising in the newspapers, calls itself Society.