have a few words with Medora before going up to Joe.

Medora, among her grilles and lambrequins, was only too willing to talk
about young Cope.

"A charming fellow--in a way," she said judicially. "Frank, but a little
too self-assured and self-centered. Exuberant, but possibly a bit cold.
Yet--charming."

"Oh," thought Randolph, "one of the cool boys, and one of the self-
sufficing. Probably a bit of an ascetic at bottom, with good capacity for
self-control and self-direction. Not at all an uninteresting type," he
summed it up. "An ebullient Puritan?" he asked aloud.

"That's it," she declared, "--according to my sense of it."

"Yet hardly a New Englander, I suppose?"

"Not directly, anyhow. From down state--from Freeford, I think he said. I
judge that there's quite a family of them."

"Quite a family of them," he repeated inwardly. A drawback indeed. Why
could an interesting young organism so seldom be detached from its milieu
and enjoyed in isolation? Prosy parents; tiresome, detrimental brothers ...
He wondered if she had any idea what they were all like. It might be just
as well, however, not to know.

"And, judging from the family name, and from their taste at christenings, I
should say there might be some slant toward England itself. A nomenclature
not without distinction. 'Bertram'; rather nice, eh? And there is a sister