all his own; but this very coolness was a help to harmony--so long, that
is, as I didn't lose my temper with it. I didn't, for the most part,
because my young man's unperturbed acceptance of the most various forms
of good fortune had more than anything else the effect of amusing me. I
had seen little of him for the last three or four years; I wondered what
his impending majority would have made of him--he didn't at all carry
himself as if the wind of his fortune were rising--and I watched him
with a solicitude that usually ended in a joke. He was a tall fresh-
coloured youth, with a candid circular countenance and a love of
cigarettes, horses and boats which had not been sacrificed to more
strenuous studies. He was reassuringly natural, in a supercivilised age,
and I soon made up my mind that the formula of his character was in the
clearing of the inward scene by his so preordained lack of imagination.
If he was serene this was still further simplifying. After that I had
time to meditate on the line that divides the serene from the inane, the
simple from the silly. He wasn't clever; the fonder theory quite defied
our cultivation, though Mrs. Pallant tried it once or twice; but on the
other hand it struck me his want of wit might be a good defensive
weapon. It wasn't the sort of density that would let him in, but the
sort that would keep him out. By which I don't mean that he had
shortsighted suspicions, but that on the contrary imagination would
never be needed to save him, since she would never put him in danger. He
was in short a well-grown well-washed muscular young American, whose
extreme salubrity might have made him pass for conceited. If he looked
pleased with himself it was only because he was pleased with life--as
well he might be, with the fortune that awaited the stroke of his
twenty-first year--and his big healthy independent person was an
inevitable part of that. I am bound to add that he was accommodating--
for which I was grateful. His habits were active, but he didn't insist
on my adopting them and he made numerous and generous sacrifices for my