I was very interested, and told her so. It always piqued my curiosity, moreover, to think why Miss Haviland picked me out—young as I was—for such confidences. I believe it was mostly because I always stared at her so; which she mistook, characteristically, for sheer flattery. Even as she spoke, I was remarking to myself the frilled languor of her dress, and her firm rather large-boned throat, and the moisture—for it was hot—under the imitation pearls, and the competent grip of her hand on the long onyx handle of her parasol. She stopped short of a sudden. George took a few steps ahead. She lifted her parasol over to the other shoulder and looked at him, and he fell into line again, a sensitive, pleased, proud smile showing above his little round beard. “Now _I_ think it would be better—simpler, more dignified, and less ghastly for _him_—if he came, say, to luncheon, and if we arranged for a small, a very small, group of the people he’d care most to see—he doesn’t, poor fellow, want to see many of us!—a _small_ group, I say, to come—George! _Please!_ It makes me nervous, it interrupts me, and it is very bad for the path.... Cover it up now with your foot. No—here—let me do it.” “Pardon,” said George, cheerfully. Miss Haviland winced again. “I don’t know about _trains_,” she went on, “but we can look one out for him” (she facilely avoided the American idiom) “and then motor him to town in—in Mrs. Edgerton’s car. Don’t you think that will be more _comme il faut_?” “He’ll be so pleased, he’ll enjoy so much meeting _her_!” exclaimed George to me, rising on his toes repeatedly and rubbing his small dry hands together. “Won’t he?” Miss Haviland turned to him severely, and at a signal he drew his arm up and she slipped hers through it. “To worry now _is_ a bit premature, perhaps,” she called back. “We’re off to see the new Discobulus. I fear it’s modeled on a late Roman copy.” And I saw her, when I glanced over my shoulder a second later, pause again and withdraw her arm to point to the Memorial Library. “What will he think of a disgrace like that, George?” I heard her imprecating.... “_What?_ You don’t _see_—that the architect’s left off a line of leaves from the capitals? Come on.” Hurrell Oaks may have been over-fastidious. Yes. But his discernments were the needs of a glowing temperament; they grew naturally out of ideals his incomparable sensitiveness created. Whereas hers—Marian Haviland’s—though derived from him, had all the—what shall I say?—snobbishness, which his lacked utterly. I can’t estimate that side of her, even now, not in view of all her accomplishments, even, except as being a little bit cheap.