And Mrs. Bunting it would seem briefly but clearly supplied an indication of the precise position of Mr. Chatteris, not omitting even that he was the nephew of an earl, as indeed why should she omit it?--and the splendid prospects of his alliance with Miss Glendower's plebeian but extensive wealth. The Sea Lady listened gravely. "He is young, he is able, he may still be anything--anything. And she is so earnest, so clever herself--always reading. She even reads Blue Books--government Blue Books I mean--dreadful statistical schedulely things. And the condition of the poor and all those things. She knows more about the condition of the poor than any one I've ever met; what they earn and what they eat, and how many of them live in a room. So dreadfully crowded, you know--perfectly shocking.... She is just the helper he needs. So dignified--so capable of giving political parties and influencing people, so earnest! And you know she can talk to workmen and take an interest in trades unions, and in quite astonishing things. _I_ always think she's just _Marcella_ come to life." And from that the good lady embarked upon an illustrative but involved anecdote of Miss Glendower's marvellous blue-bookishness.... "He'll come here again soon?" the Sea Lady asked quite carelessly in the midst of it. The query was carried away and lost in the anecdote, so that later the Sea Lady repeated her question even more carelessly. But Mrs. Bunting did not know whether the Sea Lady sighed at all or not. She thinks not. She was so busy telling her all about everything that I don't think she troubled very much to see how her information was received. What mind she had left over from her own discourse was probably centred on the tail. V Even to Mrs. Bunting's senses--she is one of those persons who take everything (except of course impertinence or impropriety) quite calmly--it must, I think, have been a little astonishing to find herself sitting in her boudoir, politely taking tea with a real live legendary creature. They were having tea in the boudoir, because of callers, and quite quietly because, in spite of the Sea Lady's smiling assurances, Mrs. Bunting would have it she _must_ be tired and unequal to the exertions of social intercourse. "After _such_ a journey," said Mrs. Bunting. There were just the three, Adeline Glendower being the third; and Fred and the three other girls, I understand, hung about in a general sort of way up and down the staircase (to the great annoyance of the servants who were thus kept out of it altogether) confirming one another's views of the tail, arguing on the theory of mermaids, revisiting the garden and beach and trying to invent an excuse for seeing the invalid again. They were forbidden to intrude and pledged to secrecy by Mrs. Bunting, and they must have been as altogether unsettled and miserable as young people can be. For a time they played croquet in a half-hearted way, each no doubt with an eye on the boudoir window.