Mr. Brandreth went on with anecdotes, theories, and moral reflections relating to the baby, and Ray answered with praiseful murmurs and perfunctory cries of wonder. He was rescued from a situation which he found more and more difficult by the advent of Mrs. Chapley, and not of Mrs. Chapley alone, but of Mrs. Brandreth. She greeted Ray with a certain severity, which he instinctively divined was not so much for him as for her husband. A like quality imparted itself, but not so authoritatively, from her mother; if Mr. Brandreth was not master in his house, at least his mother-in-law was not. Mrs. Brandreth went about the room and made some housekeeperly rearrangements of its furniture, which had the result of reducing it, as it were, to discipline. Then she sat down, and Ray, whom she waited to have speak first, had a feeling that she was sitting in judgment on him, and the wish, if possible, to justify himself. He began to praise the baby, its beauty, and great size, and the likeness he professed to find in it to its father. Mrs. Brandreth relented slightly. She said, with magnanimous impartiality, “It’s a very _healthy_ child.” Her mother made the reservation, “But even healthy children are a great care,” and sighed. The daughter must have found this intrusive. “Oh, I don’t know that Percy is any great care as yet, mamma.” “He pays his way,” Mr. Brandreth suggested, with a radiant smile. “At least,” he corrected himself, “we shouldn’t know what to do without him.” His wife said, drily, as if the remark were in bad taste, “It’s hardly a question of that, I think. Have you been long in New York, Mr. Ray?” she asked, with an abrupt turn to him. “Only a few weeks,” Ray answered, inwardly wondering how he could render the fact propitiatory. “Everything is very curious and interesting to me as a country person,” he added, deciding to make this sacrifice of himself. It evidently availed somewhat. “But you don’t mean that you are really from the country?” Mrs. Brandreth asked. “I’m from Midland; and I suppose that’s the country, compared with New York.” Mrs. Chapley asked him if he knew the Mayquayts there. He tried to think of some people of that name; in the meantime she recollected that the Mayquayts were from Gitchigumee, Michigan. They talked some irrelevancies, and then she said, “Mr. Brandreth tells me you have _met_ my husband,” as if they had been talking of him. “Yes; I had that pleasure even before I met Mr. Brandreth,” said Ray. “And you know Mr. Kane?” “Oh, yes. He was the first acquaintance I made in New York.” “Mr. Brandreth told me.” Mrs. Chapley made a show of laughing at the notion of Kane, as a harmless eccentric, and she had the effect of extending her kindly derision to Hughes, in saying, “And you’ve been taken to sit at the feet of his prophet already, Mr. Brandreth tells me; that strange Mr. Hughes.”