his unusual loquacity continued.  “Well, if one west wind (I don’t mean that as a slam on Sylvia for coming from west of the Mississippi) has done us so much good, why not have another?” he inquired.  “Why couldn’t Judith come on and make us a visit too?  It would be fun to have a scrap with her again.”  He explained to Morrison:  “She’s Sylvia’s younger sister, and we always quarreled so, as kids, that after we’d been together half an hour the referee had to shoulder in between and tell us, ’Nix on biting in clinches.’  She was great, all right, Judith was!  How is she now?” he asked Sylvia.  “I’ve been meaning ever so many times to ask you about her, and something else has seemed to come up.  I can’t imagine Judy grown up.  She hasn’t pinned up that great long braid, has she, that used to be so handy to pull?”

Sylvia took the last of her soup, put the spoon on the plate, and launched into a description of Judith, one of her favorite topics.  “Oh, Judith’s just fine!  You ought to see her!  She’s worth ten of me:  she has such lots of character!  And handsome!  You never saw anything like Judith’s looks.  Yes, she’s put her hair up!  She’s twenty years old now, what do you suppose she does with her hair?  She wears it in a great smooth braid all around her head.  And she has such hair, Aunt Victoria!” She turned from Arnold to another woman, as from some one who would know nothing of the fine shades of the subject.  “No short hairs at all, you know, like everybody else, that will hang down and look untidy!” She pulled with an explanatory petulance at the soft curls which framed her own face in an aureole of light.  “Hers is all long and smooth, and the color like a fresh chestnut, just out of the burr; and her nose is like a Greek statue—­she is a Greek statue!”

She had been carried by her affectionate enthusiasm out of her usual self-possession, her quick divination of how she was affecting everybody, and now, suddenly finding Morrison’s eyes on her with an expression she did not recognize, she was brought up short.  What had she said to make him look at her so oddly?

He answered her unspoken question at once, his voice making his every casual word of gold:  “I am thinking that I am being present at a spectacle which cynics say is impossible, the spectacle of a woman delighting—­and with the most obvious sincerity—­in the beauty of another.”

“Oh!” said Sylvia, relieved to know that the odd look concealed no criticism, “I didn’t know that anybody nowadays made such silly Victorian generalizations about woman’s cattiness,—­anybody under old Mr. Sommerville’s age, that is.  And anyhow, Judith’s my sister.”

“Cases of sisters, jealous of each other’s good looks, have not been entirely unknown to history,” said Morrison, smiling and beginning to eat his fish with a delicate relish.

“Well, if Judy’s so all-fired good-looking, let’s have her come on, Madrina,” said Arnold.  “With her and Sylvia together, we’d crush Lydford into a pulp.”  He attacked his plate with a straggling fork, eating negligently, as he did everything else.