“To her husband?” “Oh to Edward,” Mitchy laughed again, “perfectly!” “And must I call him ‘Edward’?” “Whatever you do will be right,” Mitchy returned--“even though it should happen to be sometimes what I do.” His companion, as if to look at him with a due appreciation of this, stopped swinging the nippers and put them on. “You people here have a pleasant way--!” “Oh we HAVE!”--Mitchy, taking him up, was gaily emphatic. He began, however, already to perceive the mystification which in this case was to be his happy effect. “Mr. Vanderbank,” his victim remarked with perhaps a shade more of reserve, “has told me a good deal about you.” Then as if, in a finer manner, to keep the talk off themselves: “He knows a great many ladies.” “Oh yes, poor chap, he can’t help it. He finds a lady wherever he turns.” The stranger took this in, but seemed a little to challenge it. “Well, that’s reassuring, if one sometimes fancies there are fewer.” “Fewer than there used to be?--I see what you mean,” said Mitchy. “But if it has struck you so, that’s awfully interesting.” He glared and grinned and mused. “I wonder.” “Well, we shall see.” His friend seemed to wish not to dogmatise. “SHALL we?” Mitchy considered it again in its high suggestive light. “You will--but how shall I?” Then he caught himself up with a blush. “What a beastly thing to say--as if it were mere years that make you see it!” His companion this time gave way to the joke. “What else can it be--if I’ve thought so?” “Why, it’s the facts themselves, and the fine taste, and above all something qui ne court pas les rues, an approach to some experience of what a lady IS.” The young man’s acute reflexion appeared suddenly to flower into a vision of opportunity that swept everything else away. “Excuse my insisting on your time of life--but you HAVE seen some?” The question was of such interest that he had already begun to follow it. “Oh the charm of talk with some one who can fill out one’s idea of the really distinguished women of the past! If I could get you,” he continued, “to be so awfully valuable as to fill out mine!” His fellow visitor, on this, made, in a pause, a nearer approach to taking visibly his measure. “Are you sure you’ve got an idea?” Mr. Mitchett brightly thought. “No. That must be just why I appeal to you. And it can’t therefore be for confirmation, can it?” he went on. “It must be for the beautiful primary hint altogether.” His interlocutor began, with a shake of the eyeglass, to shift and sidle again, as if distinctly excited by the subject. But it was as if his very excitement made the poor gentleman a trifle coy. “Are there no nice ones now?” “Oh yes, there must be lots. In fact I know quantities.” This had the effect of pulling the stranger up. “Ah ‘quantities’! There it is.”