"Oh, not quite that," she answered, "not _quite_ that." It was curious
to watch her talking to another man--to a man, not a bagman like Callan.
She put aside the face she always showed me and became at once what
Churchill took her for--a spoiled child. At times she suggested a
certain kind of American, and had that indefinable air of glib
acquaintance with the names, and none of the spirit of tradition. One
half expected her to utter rhapsodies about donjon-keeps.

"Oh, you know," she said, with a fine affectation of aloofness, "we
shall have to be rather hard upon you; we shall crumple you up like--"
Churchill had been moving his stick absent-mindedly in the dust of the
road, he had produced a big "C H U." She had erased it with the point of
her foot--"like that," she concluded.

He laid his head back and laughed almost heartily.

"Dear me," he said, "I had no idea that I was so much in the way of--of
yourself and Mrs. Granger."

"Oh, it's not only that," she said, with a little smile and a cast of
the eye to me. "But you've got to make way for the future."

Churchill's face changed suddenly. He looked rather old, and grey, and
wintry, even a little frail. I understood what she was proving to me,
and I rather disliked her for it. It seemed wantonly cruel to remind a
man of what he was trying to forget.

"Ah, yes," he said, with the gentle sadness of quite an old man, "I dare
say there is more in that than you think. Even you will have to learn."