.

.

And look at her!--indifferent, listless, scarcely civil any longer to her own sort, but galvanised into animation the moment some impossible professor or artist or hairy scientist flutters batlike into a drawing-room where he doesn't belong unless he's hired to be amusing! And that sounds horridly snobbish, I know; I _am_ a snob about Eileen, but not about myself because it doesn't harm me to make round wonder-eyes at a Herr Professor or gaze intensely into the eyes of an artist when he's ornamental; it doesn't make my hair come down over my ears to do that sort of thing, and it doesn't corrupt me into slinking off to museum lectures or spending mornings prowling about the Society Library or the Chinese jades in the Metropolitan--" Boots's continuous and unfeigned laughter checked the pretty, excited little matron, and after a moment she laughed, too.
"Dear Boots," she said, "can't you help me a little?
I really am serious.

I don't know what to do with the girl.

Philip never comes near us--once a week for an hour or two, which is nothing--and the child misses him.