so we're dreadfully anxious to know just how it was that you went into the Xingu." 

There was a portentous pause, a silence so big with incalculable dangers that the members with one accord checked the words on their lips, like soldiers dropping their arms to watch a single combat between their leaders. Then Mrs. Dane gave expression to their inmost dread by saying sharply: "Ah--you say _the_ Xingu, do you?" 

Mrs. Roby smiled undauntedly. "It is a shade pedantic, isn't it? Personally, I always drop the article; but I don't know how the other members feel about it." 

The other members looked as though they would willingly have dispensed with this appeal to their opinion, and Mrs. Roby, after a bright glance about the group, went on: "They probably think, as I do, that nothing really matters except the thing itself--except Xingu." 

No immediate reply seemed to occur to Mrs. Dane, and Mrs. Ballinger gathered courage to say: "Surely every one must feel that about Xingu." 

Mrs. Plinth came to her support with a heavy murmur of assent, and Laura Glyde sighed out emotionally: "I have known cases where it has changed a whole life." 

"It has done me worlds of good," Mrs. Leveret interjected, seeming to herself to remember that she had either taken it or read it the winter before. 

"Of course," Mrs. Roby admitted, "the difficulty is that one must give up so much time to it. It's very long." 

"I can't imagine," said Miss Van Vluyck, "grudging the time given to such a subject." 

"And deep in places," Mrs. Roby pursued; (so then it was a book!) "And it isn't easy to skip." 

"I never skip," said Mrs. Plinth dogmatically. 

"Ah, it's dangerous to, in Xingu. Even at the start there are places where one can't. One must just wade through." 

"I should hardly call it _wading_," said Mrs. Ballinger sarcastically. 

Mrs. Roby sent her a look of interest. "Ah--you always found it went swimmingly?" 

Mrs. Ballinger hesitated. "Of course there are difficult passages," she conceded. 

"Yes; some are not at all clear--even," Mrs. Roby added, "if one is familiar with the original." 

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