He was by no means prepared for the inquiry, but he sustained himself under it in his usual immovable manner. He put his hand up to his breast and then dropped it. "I am afraid not," he said. "Not in this suit. I forgot, in dressing, that I might need them. But I might go back to the hotel," he added, suggestively. "Oh, no, thanks," she said, returning to her former position. "I was only thinking how pleased she would be if you could show her a little one, and tell her the history of it. It would be so useful to her." "I am very sorry," said Tredennis. "You would be more sorry," she went on, "if you knew what an industrious little person she is, and with what difficulty she earns her ten dollars a column. She goes to receptions, and literary and art clubs, and to the White House, and the Capitol, and knows everybody and just what adjectives they like, and how many; and is never ill-natured at all, though it really seems to me that such an existence offers a premium to spitefulness. I am convinced that it would make me spiteful. But she never loses control over her temper--or her adjectives. If I weighed two hundred pounds, for instance, she would refer to my avoirdupois as 'matronly _embonpoint_;' and if I were a skeleton, she would say I had a 'slight and reed-like figure,' which is rather clever, you know, as well as being Christian charity." "And she will inform the world to-morrow that your dress," glancing down at it, "was white"-- "And that my hair was brown, as usual," she ended for him. "And that I carried a bouquet of heliotrope and roses." "I hope you like it," he said. "Oh, very much indeed, thank you," was her response. "And if I did not, somebody else would, or it is plain that she would not get her ten dollars a column. It has struck me that she doesn't do it for amusement, or with the deliberate intention of annoying people. For my part, I admire and envy her. There is no collection so valuable as a collection of adjectives. Everything depends on adjectives. You can begin a friendship or end it with one--or an enmity, either." "Will you tell me," said Tredennis, "what adjective you would apply to the blonde young man on the other side of the room, who has just picked up a lady's handkerchief?" She looked across the room at the person indicated, and did not reply at once. There was a faintly reflective smile in her eyes, though it could scarcely be said to touch her lips. The man was the one who had attracted Tredennis' attention at the door of the cloak-room, and since coming down-stairs he had regarded him with some interest upon each occasion when he had caught sight of him as he moved from room to room, evidently at once paying unobtrusive but unswerving attention to the social exigencies of his position, and finding a decent amount of quiet entertainment in the results of his efforts. "I wish you would tell me," said Bertha, after her little pause, "what adjective _you_ would apply to him."