"That's just why they come, that they take such an interest. I sometimes think they take more than about anything else in the world." With which Miss Putchin looked about at the place. "It _is_ pretty, don't you think, the way they've got it now?" This, Gedge saw, was a different "They"; it applied to the powers that were--the people who had appointed him, the governing, visiting Body, in respect to which he was afterwards to remark to Mrs. Gedge that a fellow--it was the difficulty--didn't know "where to have her." His wife, at a loss, questioned at that moment the necessity of having her anywhere, and he said, good-humouredly, "Of course; it's all right." He was in fact content enough with the last touches their friend had given the picture. "There are many who know all about it when they come, and the Americans often are tremendously up. Mother and me really enjoyed"--it was her only slip--"the interest of the Americans. We've sometimes had ninety a day, and all wanting to see and hear everything. But you'll work them off; you'll see the way--it's all experience." She came back for his comfort to that. She came back also to other things: she did justice to the considerable class who arrived positive and primed. "There are those who know more about it than you do. But _that_ only comes from their interest." "Who know more about what?" Gedge inquired. "Why about the place. I mean they have their ideas--of what everything is, and _where_ it is, and what it isn't and where it _should_ be. They do ask questions," she said, yet not so much in warning as in the complacency of being herself seasoned and sound; "and they're down on you when they think you go wrong. As if you ever could! You know too much," she astutely smiled; "or you _will_." "Oh you mustn't know _too_ much, must you?" And Gedge now smiled as well. He knew, he thought, what he meant. "Well, you must know as much as anybody else. I claim at any rate that I do," Miss Putchin declared. "They never really caught me out." "I'm very certain of _that_"--and Mrs. Gedge had an elation almost personal. "Surely," he said, "I don't want to be caught out." She rejoined that in such a case he would have _Them_ down on him, and he saw that this time she meant the powers above. It quickened his sense of all the elements that were to reckon with, yet he felt at the same time that the powers above were not what he should most fear. "I'm glad," he observed, "that they ever ask questions; but I happened to notice, you know, that no one did to-day." "Then you missed several--and no loss. There were three or four put to me too silly to remember. But of course they mostly _are_ silly." "You mean the questions?" She laughed with all her cheer. "Yes, sir; I don't mean the answers."