"May I ?" He offered his arm as the guests began trooping in to dinner--Penelope appropriately paired off with Fenton, whom she had come to know fairly well in the course of her professional work.
Although, as she was wont to remark, "Ralph Fenton's a big fish and I'm only a little one." They were chattering happily together of songs and singers.
"So France has a partial claim, on you, too ?" remarked Mallory, unfolding his napkin.
"Yes--a great-grandmother.

I let her take the burden of all my sins." "Not a very heavy one, I imagine," he returned, smiling.
"I don't know.

Sometimes"-- Nan's eyes grew suddenly pensive--"sometimes I feel that one day I shall do something which will make the burden too heavy to be shunted on to great-grandmamma! Then I'll have to bear it myself, I suppose." "There'll be a pal or two around, to give you a hand with it, I expect," answered Mallory.
"I don't know if there will even be that," she answered dreamily.

"Do you know, I've always had the idea that sometime or other I shall get myself into an awful hole and that there won't be a single soul in the world to get me out of it." She spoke with an odd note of prescience in her voice.

It was so pronounced that the sense of foreboding communicated itself to Mallory.
"Don't talk like that.