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 achieved. Rhoda, coming up to stand beside her, Rhoda who was always neat, compact, fresh, and pretty, by contrast seemed gauche and raw.

Thinking back to the remark which had prompted the stranger's question, Grover was rather pleased with it,—pleased, that is, to have said something sufficiently clever, or for that matter inane, to cause this being to look at him in such an odd quizzical manner. He felt subtly flattered, and that rendered him nimble and bold, with the surprising boldness of a shy man. He also thought of the contour; on the way upstairs he had caught a glimpse of it in a mirror. Poor Rhoda!

"Intimate, I hope," he replied.

"This rude young man," Rhoda explained, "goes by the name of Grover Thanet. I don't have to tell him who you are, for I've already done so. I said you'd be good for him."

"For goodness sake don't explain what you meant by the remark," said Mrs. Scantleberry. "It sounds fraught with implications."

"It was!" Rhoda retorted. "As fraught as it could be."

"Never mind," Grover counselled. "Be it anyway."

"Be what, rude young man whose name sounds like a rather pleasant island or estate?"

"Why good for me, of course," said Grover.

Mrs. Scantleberry appealed to her cousin Mortimer,