He and Amelie were seated at lunch alone together on the day following Mrs. Emsworth's triumphant debut. Amelie had only just come in from her ride--the horse she preferred to ride was one which few men could have sat--and she still wore her riding-habit. She was quite obviously the authentic daughter of her father and mother, and, like a clever girl, which she undoubtedly was, she had selected, so it seemed, all the good points possessed by both her parents, rejected all their weaknesses, and embodied the result in the adorable compound known as Amelie Palmer. She had been right, for instance, in possessing herself of her mother's extraordinary vitality and physical health, rejecting her father's digestive apparatus; on the other hand, she had chosen her father's eyes, impressing upon them, however, a certain femininity, and had set them in a complexion of dazzling fairness, which she owed to her mother. And out of the careful selection there had sprung, crowning it all, the quality that more than anything else was _she_--namely, her unrivalled exuberance of enjoyment. Whether it was some new social effort of her mother's to which she brought her glorious presence, whether she rode alone through the flowering woods, or accompanied her father on his hygienic bicycle ride--'papa's treadmill,' as she called it--she brought to all her occupations the great glowing lantern of her joy, the same brilliant smile of welcome for anything that might turn up, the same divine content-She took nothing seriously, but had enthusiasm for everything. Of refinement or intellectual qualities she had none whatever, but he would be a bloodless man who could really deplore their absence when he looked on that brilliant vitality. Surely it would be time enough to think of such gray gifts when the sparkling tide of her life ran less riotously; at present it would be like teaching some clean-limbed young colt of the meadows to sit up and beg or shake a paw.