"You are so strong," she said, and she took his arm and did not relinquish it until they came to the gate of 166. To his dismay René found Elsie with his father and mother. She declared that she had only dropped in, but she was arrayed in her most garish best and had put on her primmest and most artificial manner, talking mincingly like a chorus girl. And she patronized Linda, swaggered over her as the married woman, chattered about her darling baby, and made the party so uncomfortable that Linda could not hold her own, and a gloom would have descended on them had not Mr. Fourmy come to the rescue and told droll stories, spiced and hot, of the doings of women in various parts of the world. He cut into Elsie's gushing stories with the story of the marine and the admiral's French governess, and wound up: "In Brazil the women eat men. No half measures. Eat you they do. Look to the right or the left and they knife you. What I can't make out, Miss Brock, is why any men stay in England." Linda laughed merrily. "Hardly complimentary to us! But you came back, you know." "So I did, for my old age. England's an old man's country." "You won't get me to believe that, or René either." "Ah, but René can't see things as they are. Short-sighted René is. And George is blind; isn't he, Elsie?" Elsie giggled. She had been wanting to giggle for some time, and the appeal to her set her off. She could not stop herself. "Oh! Lor'!" she gasped, "you are funny, Mr. Fourmy. You ought to be in a pantomime. I never laugh like I do with you." And once more Elsie dominated the party. René wilted. Linda drank the many cups of tea pressed on her by Mrs. Fourmy in her nervous anxiety. Conversation flagged, sputtered, and Mr. Fourmy in desperation kept Elsie giggling with familiar jokes. Linda laughed at them too, and René sank into gloom and his mother watched him anxiously. At five o'clock Elsie gave a little scream and said she must hurry away to see that the servant (she had no servant) had made George's tea. She hurried away, and then, relieved of the oppression of her presence, René was just beginning to hope for better things when Linda, to escape from the table, asked if she might see the picture on the easel in the corner of the room. Delighted, Mr. Fourmy turned the picture to the light. Linda bit her lip and a dimple came in her cheek. "Not bad for an amateur," said Mr. Fourmy. "Just the lid of a cigar-box and a little paint. I never did care about anything but the figure." He took the picture up and looked at it lovingly, and with pride and in a queer confidential voice that startled René and stung Mrs. Fourmy into a sudden attention, he said: "You can understand an old man liking to do something with his hands, and it's strange how, when I paint a little bit like that"--he pointed to the hip--"it brings back wonderful moments I have had and rare pleasures, not just in remembering, but as they were--wonderful!"