‘Certainly; but he was only supplying a pulpit there; now he has his own parish. He is taking up a course of child-study, and asked me if he was at liberty to use the twins for psychological observations. I assented most gratefully, thinking, you know, that he couldn’t study them unless he kept them with him a good deal; but he counted without his host, as you can imagine. He lives at the hotel until his cottage is finished, and the first thing I knew he had hired a stout nursemaid as his contribution to the service of humanity. I think he was really sorry for me, for I was so confined I could scarcely ever ride, or drive, or play tennis; and besides, he simply had to have somebody to hold the children while he observed them. We succeeded better after the nurse came, and we all had delightful walks and conversations together, just a nice little family party! The hotel people called Atlantic the Cyclone, and Pacific the Warrior. Sometimes strangers took us for the children’s parents, and that was embarrassing; not that I mind being mistaken for a parent, but I decline being credited, or discredited, with the maternity of those imps!’ ‘They are altogether new in my experience,’ confessed Mary. ‘That is just what the young minister said.’ ‘Will he keep up his psychological investigation during the autumn?’ Mary inquired. ‘He really has no material there.’ ‘What will he do, then?—carry it on by correspondence?’ ‘No, that is always unsatisfactory. I fancy he will come here occasionally: it is the most natural place, and he is especially eager to meet you.’ ‘Of course!’ said Mistress Mary, reciting provokingly: ‘“My lyre I tune, my voice I raise, But with my numbers mix my sighs, And whilst I sing Euphelia’s praise I fix my soul on Chloe’s eyes.”’ ‘How delightful,’ she added, ‘how inspiring it is to see a young man so devoted to science, particularly to this neglected science! I shall be charmed to know more of his psychology and observe his observations.’ ‘He is extremely clever.’ ‘I have no doubt of it from what you tell me, both clever and ingenious.’ ‘And his cottage is lovely; it will be finished and furnished by next summer,—Queen Anne, you know.’ Now, this was so purely irrelevant that there was a wicked hint of intention about it; and though Mistress Mary was smiling (and quaking) in the very depths of her heart, she cruelly led back the conversation into safe educational channels. ‘Isn’t it curious,’ she said, ‘that we should have thought Lisa, not the twins, the impossible problem? Yet, as I have written you, her solution is something to which we can look forward with reasonable confidence. It is scarcely eighteen months, but the work accomplished is almost incredible, even to me, and I have watched and counted every step.’