She might take it as she liked, but he had had the lucidity--all, that is, for his own safety--to meet without the grace of an answer the homage of her beautiful smile. She took it apparently, and her husband took it, but as a part of his odd humour, and they followed him aloft with faces now a little more responsive to the manner in which on _that_ spot he would naturally come out. He came out, according to the word of his assured private receipt, "strong." He missed a little, in truth, the usual round-eyed question from them--the inveterate artless cue with which, from moment to moment, clustered troops had for a year obliged him. Mr. and Mrs. Hayes were from New York, but it was a little like singing, as he had heard one of his Americans once say about something, to a Boston audience. He did none the less what he could, and it was ever his practice to stop still at a certain spot in the room and, after having secured attention by look and gesture, suddenly shoot off: "Here!" They always understood, the good people--he could fairly love them now for it; they always said breathlessly and unanimously "There?" and stared down at the designated point quite as if some trace of the grand event were still to be made out. This movement produced he again looked round. "Consider it well: _the_ spot of earth----!" "Oh but it isn't _earth_!" the boldest spirit--there was always a boldest--would generally pipe out. Then the guardian of the Birthplace would be truly superior--as if the unfortunate had figured the Immortal coming up, like a potato, through the soil. "I'm not suggesting that He was born on the bare ground. He was born _here_!"--with an uncompromising dig of his heel. "There ought to be a brass, with an inscription, let in." "Into the floor?"--it always came. "Birth and burial: seedtime, summer, autumn!"--that always, with its special right cadence, thanks to his unfailing spring, came too. "Why not as well as into the pavement of the church?--you've _seen_ our grand old church?" The former of which questions nobody ever answered--abounding, on the other hand, to make up, in relation to the latter. Mr. and Mrs. Hayes even were at first left dumb by it--not indeed, to do them justice, having uttered the word that called for it. They had uttered no word while he kept the game up, and (though that made it a little more difficult) he could yet stand triumphant before them after he had finished with his flourish. Only then it was that Mr. Hayes of New York broke silence. "Well, if we wanted to see I think I may say we're quite satisfied. As my wife says, it _would_ seem your line." He spoke now, visibly, with more ease, as if a light had come: though he made no joke of it, for a reason that presently appeared. They were coming down the little stair, and it was on the descent that his companion added her word.