"We don’t have many mosquitoes at Marillo," Mrs. Collingham explained, as she led the way in, "but in spring they can be troublesome. So we’ll have our tea here. Gossip will bring it presently. Where will you sit? I think you’ll like that chair. There! What about a cushion? Oh, I’m sure you don’t need it at your age, but, still, one likes to be comfortable. No, Max; stay out. Well, if you must come in, come in. He seems to like you," she chatted on. "He’s Bob’s dog, and I suppose he takes to Bob’s friends." Rendered speechless by this frank reference to the man who was the bond between them, there was, fortunately, no immediate need for Jennie to speak, since Gossip appeared in the doorway pushing the tea equipage. It was a little table on wheels, and on it Jennie noticed, in a general way, every magnificent detail—the silver tray, the silver kettle, the silver teapot, the silver tongs, the silver spoons. "And all of them solid," she said to herself, awesomely. She regretted that she wouldn’t be at liberty to recount these marvels at home. At home, they thought her merely at the studio, while she had been borne away through the air as by a witch on a broomstick. Jennie would have said that Mrs. Collingham had hardly looked at her, but then, she reflected, every woman knew how little _looking_ you had to do to grasp the details of another woman’s personality. You took them all in at a glance, as if you brought seven or eight senses into play. Each time her hostess, now settled behind the tea table, lifted her fine eyes, Jennie was sure they "got" her, like a camera. "You pose, don’t you?" The words came out in a casual, friendly tone, as she busied herself with the spirit lamp. "That must be so interesting. I often wonder, when I’m in the big galleries, what the immortal women would have said had they known how their features would go down through the ages. Take Dorotea Nachtigal, for instance, the original of Holbein’s 'Meyer Madonna’ in Darmstadt—the most wonderful of all the Madonnas, I always say—and how queer I suppose she would have felt if she’d known that we should be adoring her when she’s no more than a handful of dust. Or the model who posed for the Madonna di San Sisto! Or the young things who sat to Greuze! Did you ever think of them?" Jennie saw how Bob could have come by words like "polygamous" and "monogamous." People at Marillo Park spoke a language of their own—"English with frills on it," was the way she put it to herself. From the intonation, she was able to frame her answer in the negative, while, once more, the superb eyes, which were oddly like Bob’s little steely ones, were lifted on her with a smile.