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66 who had learned by that time to forward any joke on hand.

"That would be unnecessary," said Mr. Romaine. "The higher education does them no harm at all, and gives them much innocent pride and pleasure."

As the luncheon progressed Miss Letty became more and more in doubt whether she liked Mr. Romaine or not. She regarded him as being somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety-five, and wished to feel the respect for him she ought to feel for all decent graybeards. But Mr. Romaine was as fully determined not to be thought old as Letty was determined to think that he was old. He was certainly unlike any old man that she had ever met; not that there was anything in the least ridiculous about him,—he was much too astute to affect juvenility,—but there was an alertness in his wonderful black eyes and a keenness in his soft speech that was far removed from old age. And he was easily master of everybody at the table, excepting Farebrother and Letty. With feminine intuition Letty felt Mr. Romaine's power, and knew that had Mr. Chessingham been the old man and Mr. Romaine the young doctor, Mr. Romaine would still have been in