on a china plate, that might have denoted deep obstinacy; and yet, with
its settled smoothness, it was neither stupid nor hard. It was as calm
as a room kept dusted and aired for candid earnest occasions, the
meeting of unanimous committees and the discussion of flourishing
businesses. If she had been a young man--and she had a little the head
of one--it would probably have been thought of her that she was likely
to become a Doctor or a Judge.

An observer would have gathered, further, that Mr. Flack's acquaintance
with Mr. Dosson and his daughters had had its origin in his crossing the
Atlantic eastward in their company more than a year before, and in some
slight association immediately after disembarking, but that each party
had come and gone a good deal since then--come and gone however without
meeting again. It was to be inferred that in this interval Miss Dosson
had led her father and sister back to their native land and had then a
second time directed their course to Europe. This was a new departure,
said Mr. Flack, or rather a new arrival: he understood that it wasn't,
as he called it, the same old visit. She didn't repudiate the
accusation, launched by her companion as if it might have been
embarrassing, of having spent her time at home in Boston, and even in a
suburban quarter of it: she confessed that as Bostonians they had been
capable of that. But now they had come abroad for longer--ever so much:
what they had gone home for was to make arrangements for a European stay
of which the limits were not to be told. So far as this particular
future opened out to her she freely acknowledged it. It appeared to meet
with George Flack's approval--he also had a big undertaking on that
side and it might require years, so that it would be pleasant to have
his friends right there. He knew his way round in Paris--or any place
like that--much better than round Boston; if they had been poked away in
one of those clever suburbs they would have been lost to him.