acidity. Isabelle laughed indifferently. Her son, slender and
tall, and with something of her own eagerness and fire in his
sunburned young face, was beside Miss Field, who talked to him in
a quiet aside while she busied herself with cups and spoons.

"Perfectly safe there!" Isabelle said.

"I should hope so!" old Madame Carter remarked, pointedly. "At
least if there's any of OUR blood in his veins--but of course he's
all Slocum. They used to say of my Aunt Georgina that she never
married because the only man she ever loved was beneath her
socially--"

Isabelle knew all about Aunt Georgina, and she looked wearily
away. Tony, sighing elaborately, drew upon himself the old lady's
fire.

"Why don't you go over and join the young people, Mr. Pope?" she
asked, pleasantly. "Isabelle and I can manage very well without a
cavalier. You're tired, Isabelle--I can always tell it. Be glad
that you're too young to know what that means, Mr. Pope. Go over
there--there's a chair next to Nina. What shall we suspect him of,
Isabelle--a quarrel with pretty Miss Allen?--if he avoids the
young people, and looks like such a thunder-cloud."

Isabelle sighed patiently.

"The Bellamys are coming in for awhile," she observed, with
deliberate irrelevance, "and I hope they'll bring their Swami--or
whatever he is, with them. He must be a queer creature."