"_Don't_ you? Isn't that a pity--I want so much to get settled in the kitchen before Mazie comes home--well, if you hear of anyone, you'll remember me, Huddesley, won't you?" Mrs. Pallinder held her glass in one hand, and shook a letter out of her muff with the other. "Mazie's letter, Doctor Vardaman--she'll be back in a week--she's going to bring a friend--the most _English_ name--one of those hyphenated names, you know. Her father's one of the secretaries at the Legation. Where--oh, here it is. 'Muriel' _isn't_ that _English_? But just listen to the rest of it!--'Ponsonby-Baxter.' Her father is Sir Julian--no, it's Lucien--no, Mr. Peters, I believe my eyes are failing--can you make out what that word is?" Gwynne, after a solemn inspection, pronounced it to be Llewellyn. "I notice all these young men read my daughter's handwriting a great deal better than I can, for some mysterious reason, Mr. Gwynne," said Mrs. Pallinder pointedly, to Steven, with her pretty laugh. And Steven actually laughed, too! Where was his animosity? Where his anathemas? He was at ease, mild, pleased, interested. In fact, Mrs. Pallinder, looking hardly a day over thirty-five, with her fresh voice, her softly bright eyes, her trim and supple figure, was an impossible sort of person for the role of mother. There was a charming absurdity in her continual half-humorous, half-sentimental allusions to her years and infirmities. "When they get here, I'm thinking of having a little company in the house, Mr. Peters," she went on, with a confidential glance that magically comprehended everybody in the room. "Some of the girls, like Kitty Oldham, for instance, and your cousin Marian, of course, if her mother will let her come--I always say, Mr. Gwynne, that it's no wonder all the girls in your family are so well-bred and have such lovely manners--_Gwynne_ manners, Colonel Pallinder calls them--it's no wonder they're all that way, they've had such careful mothers, and _such_ training! It's my despair--I'll never make Mazie that way! I should like to go to school to Mrs. Horace Gwynne myself for a while, only she wouldn't have an old thing like me around, trying to copy those beautiful, finished ways she has--the most _elegant_ woman I know! I think a little party in the house like that will make it pleasant for Miss--Miss Baxter, I suppose we'll call her--the whole name's a little too much--_Ponsonby-Baxter_! And now the colonel says he'll have to have some men in the house in self-defence. Such a houseful of women! It bores a man, I really think--oh, now, you needn't look that way, Mr. Gwynne, you _know_ it bores men sometimes to have too many women around. So we want to have some of the young men, too--of course you, Mr. Peters, and do you think Mr. Lewis would come? And then there's Mr. Taylor--the one you all call J. B., I mean. There're those three large rooms in the wing at the back, and the small one over the hall--plenty of room, don't you think so, Mr. Gwynne? You