"I presume I can look into some of his older things."

"They are all old--five hundred years and more. He was a pal of Chaucer's."

She gave him an indignant glance. "So that's it? You're laying traps for me? You don't like me! You don't respect me!"

One of the recalcitrant cushions fell to the floor. They b.u.mped heads in trying to pick it up.

"Traps!" he said. "Never in the world! Don't think it! Why, Gower is just a necessary old bore. n.o.body's supposed to know much about him--except instructors and their hapless students."

He added one more sentence to his letter to "Arthur": "She pushes you pretty hard. A little of it goes a good way..."

"Oh, if _that's_ the case..." she said. "How about your thesis?" she went on swiftly. "What are you going to write about?"

"I was thinking of Shakespeare."

"Shakespeare! There you go again! Ridiculing me to my very face!"

"Not at all. There's lots to say about him--or them."

"Oh, you believe in Bacon!"

"Not at all--once more. I should like to take a year and spend it among the manor-houses of Warwickshire. But I suppose n.o.body would stake me to that."

"I don't know what you have in mind; some wild goose chase, probably. I expect your friends would like it better if you spent your time right here."

"Probably. I presume I shall end by doing a thesis on the 'color-words'

in Keats and Sh.e.l.ley. A penniless devil was no luck."

"Anybody has luck who can form the right circle. Stay where you are. A circle formed here would do you much more good than a temporary one four thousand miles away."

Voices were heard in the front yard. "There they come, now," Mrs.

Phillips said. She rose, and one more of the wayward cushions went to the floor. It lay there unregarded,--a sign that a promising tete-a-tete was, for the time being, over.

3

_COPE IS "ENTERTAINED"_

Mrs. Phillips stepped to the front door to meet the half dozen young people who were cheerily coming up the walk. Cope, looking at the fallen cushions with an unseeing eye, remained within the drawing-room door to compose a further paragraph for the behoof of his correspondent in Wisconsin:

"Several girls helped entertain me. They came on as thick as spatter.

One played a few things on the violin. Another set up her easel and painted a picture for us. A third wrote a poem and read it to us. And a few soph.o.m.ores hung about in the background. It was all rather too much. I found myself preferring those hours together in dear old Winnebago...."

Only one of the soph.o.m.ores--if the young men were really of that objectionable tribe--came indoors with the young ladies. The others--either engaged elsewhere or consciously unworthy--went away after a moment or two on the front steps. Perhaps they did not feel "encouraged." And in fact Mrs. Phillips looked back toward Cope with the effect of communicating the idea that she had enough men for to-day. She even conveyed to him the notion that he had made the others superfluous. But--

"Hum!" he thought; "if there's to be a lot of 'entertaining,' the more there are to be entertained the better it might turn out."

He met Hortense and Carolyn--with due stress laid on their respective patronymics--and he made an early acquaintance with Amy's violin.

And further on Mrs. Phillips said:

"Now, Amy, before you really stop, do play that last little thing. The dear child," she said to Cope in a lower tone, "composed it herself and dedicated it to me."

The last little thing was a kind of "meditation," written very simply and performed quite seriously and unaffectedly. And it gave, of course, a good chance for the arms.

"There!" said Mrs. Phillips, at its close. "Isn't it too sweet? And it inspired Carolyn too. She wrote a poem after hearing it."

"A copy of verses," corrected Carolyn, with a modest catch in her breath. She was a quiet, sedate girl, with brown eyes and hair. Her eyes were shy, and her hair was plainly dressed.

"Oh, you're so sweet, so old-fashioned!" protested Mrs. Phillips, slightly rolling her eyes. "It's a poem,--of course it's a poem. I leave it to Mr. Cope, if it isn't!"

"Oh, I beg--" began Cope, in trepidation.

"Well, listen, anyway," said Medora.

The poem consisted of some six or seven brief stanzas. Its t.i.tle was read, formally, by the writer; and, quite as formally, the dedication which intervened between t.i.tle and first stanza,--a dedication to "Medora Townsend Phillips."

"Of course," said Cope to himself. And as the reading went on, he ran his eyes over the dusky, darkening walls. He knew what he expected to find.

Just as he found it the soph.o.m.ore standing between the big padded chair and the book-case spatted his hands three times. The poem was over, the patroness duly celebrated. Cope spatted a little too, but kept his eye on one of the walls.

"You're looking at my portrait!" declared Mrs. Phillips, as the poetess sank deeper into the big chair. "Hortense did it."

"Of course she did," said Cope under his breath. He transferred an obligatory glance from the canvas to the expectant artist. But--

"It's getting almost too dark to see it," said his hostess, and suddenly pressed a b.u.t.ton. This brought into play a row of electric bulbs near the top edge of the frame and into full prominence the dark plumpness of the subject. He looked back again from the painter (who also had black hair and eyes) to her work.

"I am on Parna.s.sus!" Cope declared, in one general sweeping compliment, as he looked toward the sofa where Medora Phillips sat with the three girls now grouped behind her. But he made it a boreal Parna.s.sus--one set in relief by the cold flare and flicker of northern lights.

"Isn't he the dear, comical chap!" exclaimed Mrs. Phillips, with unction, glancing upward and backward at the girls. They smiled discreetly, as if indulging in a silent evaluation of the sincerity of the compliment. Yet one of them--Hortense--formed her black brows into a frown, and might have spoken resentfully, save for a look from their general patroness.

"Meanwhile, how about a drop of tea?" asked Mrs. Phillips suddenly.

"Roddy"--to the soph.o.m.ore--"if you will help clear that table...."

The youth hastened to get into action. Cope went on with his letter to "Arthur":

"It was an afternoon in Lesbos--with Sappho and her band of appreciative maidens. Phaon, a poor lad of nineteen, swept some pamphlets and paper-cutters off the center-table, and we all plunged into the ocean of Oolong--the best thing we do on this island...."

He was lingering in a smiling abstractedness on his fancy, when--

"Bertram Cope!" a voice suddenly said, "do you do nothing--nothing?"

He suddenly came to. Perhaps he had really deserved his hostess'

rebuke. He had not offered to help with the tea-service; he had preferred no appropriate remark, of an individual nature, to any of the three _ancillae_....