"I wonder if he would like the strawberry shortcake thing?" Helen continued. "I'm sure he liked rum and took snuff and swore. And you'll please not to tell the seventeenth cousin that I made the cake. I take no risks." The ring of her laugh remained in the room after she had returned to the kitchen. Helen was never more puzzling to her aunt than when she laughed; for then she was most French, and Mrs. Sanford ascribed much in Helen to Gallic inheritance. "Poor dear!" thought her aunt. She was always thinking "Poor dear!" but she seldom gave voice to it--not in Helen's presence. It was the sure match to her temper. She would not bear to be "poor deared," as she called it, even by Henriette. Now Mrs. Sanford herself was regarding the portrait intently, and her husband entering joined her in its study. "You see the likeness, too?" she asked, with a thrill of pride. "The moment he alighted at the station. We'll seat him under it at dinner--a plot!" said the vicar, smiling, and he caught her hand in his in a way that would have been pleasant to an observer. But if there had been an observer it would not have happened. Voices were heard on the lawn and they looked out to see Phil and Henriette returning. His American accent which had sounded strange at first grew attractive to Mrs. Sanford. She herself showed him to his room to make sure that everything was right. The hot water "can," as he would have called it, was standing in the wash basin covered with a towel to retain the heat. His bag was unpacked and his toilet articles were laid out. "The maids do that for you in England?" he said. "Don't yours?" she inquired. "Not Jane in a thousand years. She would regard me as a mollycoddle if I permitted it. Sometimes they do it in country houses which are as big as hotels on the hills outside Longfield." "Strange!" she murmured. "And I am to put my shoes, I mean my boots, outside the door at night?" he asked. She was not quite certain of herself, being apprehensive of some American joke back of the question. "Of course," she said. "I'll try, though it is going to give my Puritan conscience a twinge," he said drily. "I'll try if you will not tell Jane when you come to visit us in America. Whatever happens, I mean never to lose my standing with Jane." She laughed without understanding why, except that she was liking this frank American cousin better and better. Indeed, the glow of a new emotion, sounding through years which had had their omnipresent sadness, had possessed her since she had looked at the portrait in the dining-room. The cheer of it was in her voice as she called outside Henriette's door to know if she needed anything; and then after she had passed Helen's door she remembered Helen and called to her also.