"How comes Chad so mixed up, anyway ?" "Ah, ah, ah!"-- and little Bilham fell back on his cushions.
It reminded our friend of Miss Barrace, and he felt again the brush of his sense of moving in a maze of mystic closed allusions.

Yet he kept hold of his thread.

"Of course I understand really; only the general transformation makes me occasionally gasp.

Chad with such a voice in the settlement of the future of a little countess--no," he declared, "it takes more time! You say moreover," he resumed, "that we're inevitably, people like you and me, out of the running.

The curious fact remains that Chad himself isn't.