come last night? She had been told that I was at her lecture, and it had
frightened her--yes, really, almost as much as years ago in Hillbridge.
She never _could_ get over that stupid shyness, and the whole business was
as distasteful to her as ever; but what could she do? There was the baby--
he was a big boy now, and boys were _so_ expensive! But did I really think
she had improved the least little bit? And why wouldn't I come home with
her now, and see the boy, and tell her frankly what I had thought of the
lecture? She had plenty of flattery--people were _so_ kind, and every one
knew that she did it for the baby--but what she felt the need of was
criticism, severe, discriminating criticism like mine--oh, she knew that I
was dreadfully discriminating!

I went home with her and saw the boy. In the early heat of her Tennyson-
worship Mrs. Amyot had christened him Lancelot, and he looked it. Perhaps,
however, it was his black velvet dress and the exasperating length of his
yellow curls, together with the fact of his having been taught to recite
Browning to visitors, that raised to fever-heat the itching of my palms in
his Infant-Samuel-like presence. I have since had reason to think that he
would have preferred to be called Billy, and to hunt cats with the other
boys in the block: his curls and his poetry were simply another outlet for
Mrs. Amyot's irrepressible coquetry.

But if Lancelot was not genuine, his mother's love for him was. It
justified everything--the lectures _were_ for the baby, after all. I had
not been ten minutes in the room before I was pledged to help Mrs. Amyot
carry out her triumphant fraud. If she wanted to lecture on Plato she
should--Plato must take his chance like the rest of us! There was no use,
of course, in being "discriminating." I preserved sufficient reason to
avoid that pitfall, but I suggested "subjects" and made lists of books for
her with a fatuity that became more obvious as time attenuated the