We were not always certain what sort of impression we were making on Muriel; and, however eager we might have been to find out, there are some questions any girl would go to the scaffold rather than ask. But I know that on one point we were intolerably vain; perhaps that vanity was the most honest, creditable, endearing quality we possessed; and something of the same feeling stirs me even now. Where, where on this globe, we asked ourselves triumphantly, would Muriel find anything to match the ready deference, the kind, half-humorous, wholly charming devotion of the American man to his womankind? Indeed, it was plain to see she was unused to this Sir Walter Raleigh attitude; she was as much puzzled as pleased by it. I think we were somewhat disposed to patronise her; and Kitty Oldham declared openly she didn't believe Miss Baxter had ever had an offer in her life. She was an exceptionally handsome girl; she must have had a far wider social experience than ours; but, for all that, and in spite of her size and the splendid unconscious ease of her bearing, we detected in her a curious timidity. It suited her. Had she attempted to imitate the brisk, fearless, autocratic American girl, she would have been merely a big hoyden. There was, after all, something sweet in her naive tactlessness, her awkward conscientious efforts at adapting herself to ways she could not understand, and perhaps at heart, did not really like. To one of us, at least, the association was not without profit. I used to feel that someone ought in conscience to explain Mrs. Botlisch to Muriel, to apologise for that really terrible old woman; the irritating thing was that Muriel accepted her without comment, exactly as she accepted the rest of us--as if, I thought with annoyance, we were all freaks together! "Mazie's grandmother is not--well--er--she's not at all--you know?" I said, feeling, notwithstanding this public-spirited effort, a little embarrassed under Muriel's direct, serious gaze. "Mrs. Botlisch is--well, she's really not--er--very good style, nobody else here is like her--you must have noticed it. She's awfully _common_--of course, we didn't know much about the Pallinders before they came here--nobody knows how they--they got _in_, you see----" "I shouldn't think you'd come to the house so much if you feel that way," said Muriel. "I wouldn't." She did not mean it as a rebuke; she was only saying, as usual, precisely what she thought. But all at once, with the uncompromising harshness of youth, I saw and denounced myself inwardly for a petty groundling, eating people's bread with a covert sneer, and parading their shortcomings before a stranger. No, Muriel would not have done it. _Noblesse oblige!_