"We'll share him with you, Mr. Welles." Marise was touched by the wistfulness of his tone. She noticed that Mr. Marsh had made no comment on the children. He was perhaps one of the people who never looked at them, unless they ran into him. Eugenia Mills was like that, quite sincerely. "May I have a little more of the _blanquette_, if I won't be considered a glutton?" asked Mr. Marsh now. "I've sent to the city for an invaluable factotum of mine to come and look out for us here, and when he comes, I hope you'll give him the recipe." The little boys clattered back and began to eat again, in haste with frequent demands for their mother to tell them what time it was. In spite of this precaution, the clock advanced so relentlessly that they were obliged to set off, the three of them, before dessert was eaten, with an apple in one hand and a cookie in the other. The two men leaned back in their chairs with long breaths, which Marise interpreted as relief. "Strenuous, three of them at once, aren't they?" she said. "A New York friend of mine always says she can take the vibration-cure, only by listening to family talk at our table." "What's the vibration-cure?" asked Mr. Welles seriously. "Oh, _I_ don't know!" confessed Marise. "I'm too busy to keep up with the latest fads in cures as Eugenia does. You may meet her there this summer, by the way. She usually spends a part of the summer with us. She is a very old school-friend of mine." "French or Vermont incarnation?" inquired Marsh casually. "May I smoke? Won't you have a cigarette, yourself?" "Oh, _French!_" Marise was immensely amused, and then, remembering that the joke was not apparent, "If you'd ever seen her, even for a moment, you'd know why I laugh. She is the embodiment of sophisticated cosmopolitanism, an expert on all sorts of esoteric, aesthetic and philosophic matters, book-binding, historic lace, the Vedanta creed, Chinese porcelains, Provencal poetry, Persian shawls . . ." "What nationality is she, herself?" inquired Mr. Welles with some curiosity. Marise laughed. "She was born in Arkansas, and brought up in Minnesota, what did you suppose? No European could ever take culture so seriously. You know how any convert always has a thousand times more fervor than the fatigued members of the faith who were born to it." "Like Henry James, perhaps?" suggested Marsh.