“I thought you were not at home in bed because you couldn’t sleep.”

“I know it.  And you’ve no idea how horrible a bed is that you can’t sleep in.”  The old man’s voice broke in a tremor.  “Ah, it’s a bed of torture!  I spend many a wicked hour in mine, envying St. Lawrence his gridiron.  But what do you think of my theory?”

“It’s a very pretty theory.  My only objection to it is that it’s too flattering.  You know I rather prefer to abuse my sex; and to be set up as a natural aristocracy—­I don’t know that I can quite agree to that, even to account satisfactorily for being at your sister-in-law’s reception.”

“You’re too modest, Mrs. Brinkley.”

“No, really.  There ought to be some men among us—­men without morrows.  Now, why don’t you and my husband set an example to your sex?  Why don’t you relax your severe sense of duty?  Why need you insist upon being at your offices every morning at nine?  Why don’t you fling off these habits of lifelong industry, and be gracefully indolent in the interest of the higher civilisation?”

Bromfield Corey looked round at her with a smile of relish for her satire.  Her husband was a notoriously lazy man, who had chosen to live restrictedly upon an inherited property rather than increase it by the smallest exertion.

“Do you think we could get Andy Pasmer to join us?”

“No, I can’t encourage you with that idea.  You must get on without Mr. Pasmer; he’s going back to Europe with his son-in-law.”

“Do you mean that their girl’s married?”

“No-engaged.  It’s just out.”

“Well, I must say Mrs. Pasmer has made use of her time.”  He too liked to imply that it was all an effect of her manoeuvring, and that the young people had nothing to do with it; this survival from European fiction dies hard.  “Who is the young man?”

Mrs. Brinkley gave him an account of Dan Mavering as she had seen him at Campobello, and of his family as she just heard of them.  “Mr. Munt was telling me about them as you came up.”

“Why, was that John Munt?”

“Yes; didn’t you know him?”

“No,” said Corey sadly.  “I don’t know anybody nowadays.  I seem to be going to pieces every way.  I don’t call sixty-nine such a very great age.”

“Not at all!” cried Mrs. Brinkley.  “I’m fifty-four myself, and Brinkley’s sixty.”

“But I feel a thousand years old.  I don’t see people, and when I do I don’t know ’em.  My head’s in a cloud.”  He let it hang heavily; then he lifted it, and said:  “He’s a nice, comfortable fellow, Munt is.  Why didn’t he stop and talk a bit?”

“Well, Munt’s modest, you know; and I suppose he thought he might be the third that makes company a crowd.  Besides, nobody stops and talks a bit at these things.  They’re afraid of boring or being bored.”