As it came up between them that they might now take their friend for a feature of the control of these latter now sought to be exerted from Woollett, Strether felt indeed how it would be stamped all over him, half an hour later for Sarah Pocock's eyes, that he was as much on Chad's "side" as Waymarsh had probably described him.

He was letting himself at present, go; there was no denying it; it might be desperation, it might be confidence; he should offer himself to the arriving travellers bristling with all the lucidity he had cultivated.
He repeated to Chad what he had been saying in the court to Waymarsh; how there was no doubt whatever that his sister would find the latter a kindred spirit, no doubt of the alliance, based on an exchange of views, that the pair would successfully strike up.

They would become as thick as thieves--which moreover was but a development of what Strether remembered to have said in one of his first discussions with his mate, struck as he had then already been with the elements of affinity between that personage and Mrs.Newsome herself.

"I told him, one day, when he had questioned me on your mother, that she was a person who, when he should know her, would rouse in him, I was sure, a special enthusiasm; and that hangs together with the conviction we now feel--this certitude that Mrs.Pocock will take him into her boat.

For it's your mother's own boat that she's pulling." "Ah," said Chad, "Mother's worth fifty of Sally!" "A thousand; but when you presently meet her, all the same you'll be meeting your mother's representative--just as I shall.