"You can say 'ladies' to me," smiled the very handsome one before him.
"That's the generation _I_ belong to."

The colonel bowed playfully. "Well, you know, I don't detect myself, but
there's no doubt I have infected the premises."

"Open fires are good ventilators. I wish you would smoke now. If you
don't, I shall have to go away, and I'm exceedingly comfortable."

"You are exceedingly charming to say so--on top of that last stick, too!"
The colonel had Irish as well as Virginian progenitors. "Well," he sighed,
proceeding to make himself conditionally happy, "Moya will never forgive
me! We spoil each other shamefully when we're alone, but of course we try
to jack each other up when company comes. It's a great comfort to have
some one to spoil, isn't it, now? I needn't ask which it is in your
family!"

"The spoiled one?" Mrs. Bogardus smiled rather coldly. "A woman we had for
governess, when Christine was a little thing, used to say: 'That child is
the stuff that tyrants are made of!' Tyrants are made by the will of their
subjects, don't you think, generally speaking?"

"Well, you couldn't have made a tyrant of your son, Mrs. Bogardus. He's
the Universal Spoiler! He'll ruin my striker, Jephson. I shall have to
send the fellow back to the ranks. I don't know how you keep a servant
good for anything with Paul around."

"Paul thinks he doesn't like to be waited on," Paul's mother observed
shrewdly. "He says that only invalids, old people, and children have any