Mrs. Lorimer came smiling back from her call. "Very nice," she told her husband and her daughter, "really charming. And her things are quite wonderful ... rare rugs ... portraits of ancestors. A widow. Here for her health, and the boy's health; he's never been strong. All she has in the world ... wrapped up in him. Very Eastern!"—she laughed at the memory. "She said, 'And from what part of the East do you come, Mrs. Lorimer?' When I said I was born here in Los Angeles she almost[Pg 32] gasped, and then she flushed and said, 'Oh, really? Is it possible? But I met some people on shipboard, once—the time before last when I was crossing—who were natives, and they were quite delightful.'"

[Pg 32]

"The word 'native' intrigues them," said Stephen, drawing off her long, limp suede gloves and smoothing them. "I daresay she'll be looking for war whoops and tomahawks. And if it comes to that, we can furnish the former, especially Sunday night."

"Muzzie, did you meet the boy?" Honor wanted to know.

"Yes. He came in for tea with us. A beautifully mannered boy. Very much at ease. We must have him here, Honor."

"Yes, Jimsy's already asked him for Sunday night, Muzzie. Jimsy likes him."

"Well, he may. He has a something ... I don't know what it is, exactly, but he will be good for all of you."

"We'll be good for him, too," said her daughter, calmly. "It must be fearfully dull for him, not knowing any one, and being lame."

He came to supper, a trim young glass of fashion, and it was he, the stranger, who was entirely at his ease, and the "bunch," the gay, accustomed bunch, which was a little shy and constrained. Jimsy stood[Pg 33] sponsor for him and Honor was an earnest hostess. He said he enjoyed himself; certainly he made himself gently agreeable to Mrs. Lorimer, to the girls. Honor's stepfather observed him with his undying curiosity. He was a plain boy with a look of past pain in his colorless face, a shadowed bitterness in his eyes, a droop at the corners of his mouth when he was not speaking. For all his two motor cars and his rare old rugs and the portraits of ancestors and his idolized only sonship, life had clearly withheld from him the things he had wanted most. There was a baffled imperiousness about him, Stephen decided.

[Pg 33]

"A clever youngster," he told his wife, watching him from across the room. "Brains. But I don't like him."

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