Waymarsh meanwhile sat opposite him with their hostess between; and Miss Gostrey spoke of herself as an instructor of youth introducing her little charges to a work that was one of the glories of literature. The glory was happily unobjectionable, and the little charges were candid; for herself she had travelled that road and she merely waited on their innocence. But she referred in due time to their absent friend, whom it was clear they should have to give up. “He either won’t have got your note,” she said, “or you won’t have got his: he has had some kind of hindrance, and, of course, for that matter, you know, a man never writes about coming to a box.” She spoke as if, with her look, it might have been Waymarsh who had written to the youth, and the latter’s face showed a mixture of austerity and anguish. She went on however as if to meet this. “He’s far and away, you know, the best of them.” “The best of whom, ma’am?” “Why of all the long procession—the boys, the girls, or the old men and old women as they sometimes really are; the hope, as one may say, of our country. They’ve all passed, year after year; but there has been no one in particular I’ve ever wanted to stop. I feel—don’t _you?_—that I want to stop little Bilham; he’s so exactly right as he is.” She continued to talk to Waymarsh. “He’s too delightful. If he’ll only not spoil it! But they always _will_; they always do; they always have.” “I don’t think Waymarsh knows,” Strether said after a moment, “quite what it’s open to Bilham to spoil.” “It can’t be a good American,” Waymarsh lucidly enough replied; “for it didn’t strike me the young man had developed much in _that_ shape.”