He made a gesture intended, in the American manner, to be at once polite
and jocose, and was gone, leaving Mrs. Pasmer a little surprised, and Mr.
Mavering in some misgiving, which he tried to overcome pressing his jaws
together two or three times without speaking. She had no trouble in
getting in the first remark. "Isn't all this charming, Mr. Mavering?" She
spoke in a deep low voice, with a caressing manner, and stood looking up,
at Mr. Mavering with one shoulder shrugged and the other drooped, and a
tasteful composition of her fan and hands and handkerchief at her waist.

"Yes, ma'am, it is," said Mr. Mavering. He seemed to say ma'am to her
with a public or official accent, which sent Mrs. Primer's mind
fluttering forth to poise briefly at such conjectures as, "Congressman
from a country district? judge of the Common Pleas? bank president?
railroad superintendent? leading physician in a large town?--no, Mr. Munt
said Mister," and then to return to her pretty blue eyes, and to centre
there in that pseudo-respectful attention under the arch of her neat
brows and her soberly crinkled grey-threaded brown hair and her very
appropriate bonnet. A bonnet, she said, was much more than half the
battle after forty, and it was now quite after forty with Mrs. Pasmer;
but she was very well dressed otherwise. Mr. Mavering went on to say,
with a deliberation that seemed an element of his unknown dignity,
whatever it might be, "A number of the young fellows together can give a
much finer spread, and make more of the day, in a place like this, than
we used to do in our rooms."

"Ah, then you're a Harvard man too!" said Mrs. Primer to herself, with
surprise, which she kept to herself, and she said to Mavering: "Oh yes,
indeed! It's altogether better. Aren't they nice looking fellows?" she
said, putting up her glass to look at the promenaders.