His shoulders sloped, his stature but sufficed, and wasn't some slight deflection from the straight to be confessed to by his extraordinarily thin legs, in their understrapped buff pantaloons, a pretty match to a complete puce-coloured frock of the very finest smooth cloth, now left open to the bristle of frill and the ribboned dangle of watch-fob? The point most of all made by him at any rate was that of his being in his way, and the more remarkably as without her facilities, not less the fine gentleman than Mrs. Midmore was the fine lady. "Oh our happy understanding was arrived at long ago!"--Ralph found himself liking to speak as if endless generations had prepared it. "You'll understand how with such a wind in my sails I couldn't be slow to get into port. And the kindness," he said, "with which I have been treated this hour----!" He left that to bridge all gaps while his face invited his relatives to see how for others still than themselves he put himself in their hands. They saw it at once, they rallied, as he felt, altogether, and Sir Cantopher's presence crowned all their confidence without at all impairing his own. Ralph had been having from them this and that about him, but to see him there was to understand him as the supremely valid family friend, with certain of whose aspects liberties of remark might be taken behind his back, but with whose judgment and whose taste they would ever, and most particularly, wish their appearance as a family to consort. Our young man, with the divinatory gift that so unfailingly flared up in him under stress, was quickly mastering the truth that, for that matter, criticism of his friends would enjoy a range on this visitor's part which it could scarce hope to achieve in any conditions on Molly's or her mother's, affirm their claim to the luxury as they might. It was wonderful, it was already inspiring, that Sir Cantopher, by the mere action of a sign or two of the simplest, seemed to blow on the perceptive flame as if he had directly applied his breath. He recognised, he recognised--Ralph took that almost exultingly in for the quickening of interest it surely promised. What he recognised was that the American cousin appeared to justify himself to sight; which was perhaps no great showing, especially as an effect of but two or three glances--yet it offered that pilgrim an inviting extension, one he only asked to make the most of.