"Suppose we are, and by Jove, isn't he what we aren't? I'm primitive, I suppose. I think hands and brains are better than manners." "I'll agree, but I don't like his hands or his brains either." "He'll mount high." "As high as Haman. I shouldn't be the least surprised to see it." "Well, I'm not going to give him up because he doesn't shake hands at the latest fashionable angle." "All right, Dick. And I'm not going to take him up because he's a dab at rodomontade." "And you neither of you need fight about him," May put in, laughing. They joined in her laugh, each excusing himself by good-natured abuse of the other. There was no question of a quarrel, but the divergence was complete, striking, and even startling. To one all was black, to the other all white; to one all tin, to the other all gold. Was there no possibility of compromise? As she sat between the two, May thought that a discriminating view of Quisante ought to be attainable, not an oscillation from disgust to admiration, but a well-balanced stable judgment which should allow full value to merits and to defects, and sum up the man as a whole. Something of the sort she tried to suggest; neither disputant would hear of it, and Marchmont went off with an unyielding assertion that the man was a cad, no more and no less than a cad. Dick looked after him with a well-satisfied air; May fancied that opposition and the failure of others to understand intensified his satisfaction in his own discovery. But he grew mournful as he said to her, "I shan't have a chance with you now. You'll go with Marchmont of course. And I did want you to like him." "Mr. Marchmont doesn't control my opinions." They were very old friends; Dick allowed himself a significant smile. "I know what you mean," she said, smiling. "But it's nonsense. Besides, look at yourself and Amy! She hates him, and yet you----" "Oh, she's only half-serious, and Marchmont's in deadly earnest under that deuced languid manner of his. I tell you what, he's a very limited fellow, after all." May laughed; the limits were being turned to a new use now. "Awfully clever and well-read, but shut up inside a sort of compartment of life. Don't you know what I mean? He's always ridden first-class, and he won't believe there's anybody worth knowing in the thirds." "You think he's like that?" she asked thoughtfully. "You can see it for yourself. There's no better fellow, no better friend, but, hang it, an oyster's got a broader mind." "I like broad minds." "Then you'll like Quis----" "Absolutely you shan't mention that name again. Find mother for me and tell her to tell me that it's time to go home."