Her father nodded approval, and Arthur said, "Yes, but a popular man or woman needs more than tact. To be agreeable and to flatter is not enough--you must be tremendously _worth while_, so that people feel honoured by your interest. I think there is a great deal more in popularity than you allow. Watch a really popular woman in a roomful of people, and see how much of herself she gives to each one she talks to, and what generous manners she has. Counterfeit sympathy won't do, it is easily detected. It is all a question really of manners, but one must be born with good manners; they aren't acquired." "Generous manners!" said Mr. Seton. "I like the phrase. There are people who give one the impression of having to be sparing of their affection and sympathy because their goods are all, so to speak, in the shop-window, and if they use them up there is nothing to fall back upon. Others can offer one a largesse because their life is very rich within. But, again, there are people who have the wealth within but lack the power of expression. It is the fortunate people who have been given the generous manners--Friday's bairns, born loving and giving--others have the warm instincts but they are 'unwinged from birth.'" Stewart Stevenson nodded his head to show his approval of the sentiment, and said, "That is so." Elizabeth laughed. "There was a great deal of feeling in the way you said that, Mr. Stevenson." "Well," he said, with rather a rueful smile, "I've only just realized it--I'm one of the people with shabby manners." "You have not got shabby manners," said Elizabeth indignantly. "Arthur, when I offer a few light reflections on life and manners there is no need to delve--you and Father--into the subject and make us uncomfortable imagining we haven't got things. Personally, I don't aspire to such heights, and I flatter myself I'm rather a popular person." "An ideal minister's daughter, I'm told," said Arthur. "Pouf! I'm certainly not that. I'm sizes too large for the part. I have positively to uncoil myself like a serpent when I sit at bedsides. I'm as long as a day without bread, as they say in Spain. But I do try very hard to be nice to the church folk. My face is positively stiff with grinning when I come home from socials and such like. An old woman said to me one day, 'A kirk is rale like a shop. In baith o' them ye've to humour yer customers!'" "A very discerning old woman," said her father. "But you must admit, Elizabeth, that our 'customers' are worth the humouring." "Oh! they are--except for one or two fellows of the baser sort--and I do think they appreciate our efforts." This smug satisfaction on his sister's part was too much for Buff in his state of revolt against society. He finished laying a carmine cloud across a deeply azure sky, and said: