again the warm colour came into her cheeks. Then she began to talk quickly of a recent play. Her voice was not quite steady. She wouldn't meet his eyes. Miss Hutchinson was speaking of a paper she'd read before the Boston literati on "The Message of Ibsen." Cecilia didn't know much about Ibsen, but she thought he would have been rather surprised if he'd heard what he "really meant." K. Stuyvesant was, as usual, with them. Cecilia and he looked at each other often. The new, disconcerting light in his eyes had given way, and was displaced for the moment by a mischievous twinkle. Cecilia was able to look at him frankly again. Miss Hutchinson arose, untangling from her steamer blanket like a huge butterfly from a cocoon. "My point was," she said loudly, "that Ibsen is the Seer of those who SEE, but," she sighed, "there are so few of us!" She vanished. Cecilia giggled. "Are you one of us?" she asked of K. Stuyesant. "Lord, no!" he answered laughing, and then added seriously, "I'm an awful duffer. Stupid and all that. I never used to care, but now I do. You—you don't read that kind of stuff, do you?" His appeal held a great fear. "Oh, no!" answered Cecilia. "I stopped reading improving things after I left school, I can't bear them, and it depresses me so to use my head! I'm not a bit clever." She sighed with her last words. They were both making many confessions about their failings. Somehow it seemed necessary. Also, they both wished a great deal of the time that they were much nicer! "You know what Stephen Leacock said about intellectual honesty?" asked Cecilia. K. Stuyvesant shook his head. "I can't quote," said Cecilia, "but he said as you grew old you would find books had brought you more pleasure than anything except tobacco. But then, he said, you must be honest about them, reading only what you liked. That if 'Pippa Passes' didn't appeal, you should let 'Pippa' pass, that she was not for you. There was some more, but I shan't ruin it by misquoting it. It was so clever!" K. Stuyvesant didn't answer. Because Cecilia was afraid of his silences, she began to tell him of a small brother whom she greatly loved. "But you'll know him," she ended, "if you come to see us. You will, won't you?"
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