"We invalids, you know," she went on, with a little smile, "must be humoured. We can't go to people, so people must come to us. It's like Mahomet and the mountain." "I wasn't thinking of that," answered Allan, with a shy glance of admiration, "but of the fisherman and the Princess." "So you know your Arabian Nights!" said Mrs. Heywood, colouring faintly with pleasure at the compliment. "That is right--every boy ought to know them. But you make me feel a sort of impostor. I have used that reference to Mahomet and the mountain all my life, but I don't know that I ever really heard the story. Do you know it?" "Bacon tells about it in one of his essays," Allan answered. "It seems that Mahomet announced one day that he would call a hill to him, and offer up prayers from the top of it. A great crowd assembled and Mahomet called the hill again and again, but it didn't move, and finally, without seeming worried or abashed, he announced that, since the mountain wouldn't come to Mahomet, Mahomet would go to the mountain, and marched away to it as proudly as though the mountain had obeyed him." "That is the first time I ever heard the whole story," said Mrs. Heywood, laughing, and she shot him a little observing glance, for he seemed an unusual boy. Then she led him on to tell her something of himself, and almost before he knew it, he was telling her much more than he had ever thought to tell any one. There was a subtle sympathy about her--in her smile, in her quiet eyes--which there was no resisting. She sent him away, at last, to join the younger guests, but he did not feel at ease with them, as he had with the older woman. They were all polite enough, but youth is selfish, and Allan soon found that he and they had few interests in common; there was nothing to talk about; they had not the same friends, nor the same habits of thought; there were no mutual recollections to laugh over, nor plans to make for next day or next week. Of his hostess he saw very little, for her other guests claimed her attention at every turn--Betty Heywood was evidently immensely popular.