"It's awfully companionable to realize that you also are human, 'Trude," he hazarded on the doorstep. Gertrude put a still hand into his, which is a way of saying "Good night," that may be more formal than any other. "The Colonel's lady, and July O'Grady," she quoted lightly. "Good night, Jimmie." Up-stairs in her great chamber under the eaves, Eleanor was composing a poem which she copied carefully on a light blue page of her private diary. It read as follows: "To love, it is the saddest thing, When friendship proves unfit, For lots of sadness it will bring, When e'er you think of it. Alas! that friends should prove untrue And disappoint you so. Because you don't know what to do, And hardly where to go." CHAPTER XII MADAM BOLLING "Is this the child, David?" "Yes, mother." Eleanor stared impassively into the lenses of Mrs. Bolling's lorgnette. "This is my mother, Eleanor." Eleanor courtesied as her Uncle Jimmie had taught her, but she did not take her eyes from Mrs. Bolling's face. "Not a bad-looking child. I hate this American fashion of dressing children like French dolls, in bright colors and smart lines. The English are so much more sensible. An English country child would have cheeks as red as apples. How old are you?" "Eleven years old my next birthday." "I should have thought her younger, David. Have her call me madam. It sounds better." "Very well, mother. I'll teach her the ropes when the strangeness begins to wear off. This kind of thing is all new to her, you know." "She looks it. Give her the blue chamber and tell Mademoiselle to take charge of her. You say you want her to have lessons for so many hours a day. Has she brains?" "She's quite clever. She writes verses, she models pretty well, Gertrude says. It's too soon to expect any special aptitude to develop." "Well, I'm glad to discover your philanthropic tendencies, David. I never knew you had any before, but this seems to me a very doubtful undertaking. You take a child like this from very plain surroundings and give her a year or two of life among cultivated and well-to-do people, just enough for her to acquire a taste for extravagant living and associations. Then what becomes of her? You get tired of your bargain. Something else comes on the docket. You marry--and then what becomes of your protegee? She goes back to the country, a thoroughly unsatisfied little rustic, quite unfitted to be the wife of the farmer for whom fate intended her." "I wish you wouldn't, mother," David said, with an uneasy glance at Eleanor's pale face, set in the stoic lines he remembered so well from the afternoon of his first impression of her. "She's a sensitive little creature."