Tap-tap on the hassock, oh, most softly and confidentially! Would he make Phil an allowance? No doubt take him into partnership! And Phil would doubtless prefer to live mostly abroad--but not too fast! "France is beautiful, isn't it?" mused Madame Ribot. "Well, the people made it that way," he answered. "For sheer beauty as it was in the days of the fellows who got their meal tickets with bows and arrows you can't beat the Berkshires or the Blue Ridge. Yes, it's work, and these French have been at it a long time. They like to see things growing and so do I. Want everybody and everything busy and smiling, including the land. That's pretty good gospel." "And we who live in Europe enjoy all the beauty which countless generations have made." "Yes, like Phil will my farm," Peter replied. "But where I get even is in making the farm. Nearly ruined me, that farm!" "You express everything so well!" exclaimed Madame Ribot admiringly. "Do I?" Peter said, almost naïvely. "Well, you know that depends upon whom you are talking to," he added, in another burst of simple candour. Madame Ribot's eyelashes flickered and tap-tap on the hassock! His compliments were different from the Count's, but none the less diverting. They flattered her with a sense of personal power in tune with the luxurious humming of the motor. "It's been a most enjoyable journey," he remarked gallantly, as he assisted her to alight at Lady Truckleford's; while he thought: "Five hours of that was enough, and I think I gave her as good as she sent!" "Henriette is absent for the moment," said Lady Truckleford to Madame Ribot. "She has gone to bring her Cousin Phil for tea." The bandages off for another examination by Dr. Braisted, the autumn sunlight which kissed the tree-tops and cathedral spires and gave the Channel, which was calm that day, a gossamery sheen, was soft to Phil's irises in its caressing promise that next time the bandages were removed he should see even better. People were now dim moving shadows to him; the windows of the ward bright squares in faintly perceptible walls. His hearing was good enough to differentiate in tones but not to make out words unless they were shouted. His pride still refused to let him speak and kept him not unhappily to his pad; for he had been so long without speech that his pencil was an old comrade to whom he disliked in a way to say good-bye. The pain devils' power had become so ineffectual that they were disregarded, pin-pricking grumblers at convalescence.