Page:The Better Sort (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1903).djvu/344

THE BETTER SORT will. He's hopeless, or rather I am. I'm no good. And he knows it."

"O—oh!" the young man kindly but vaguely pro tested. "Has he been making that remark to you?"

"No—that's the worst of it. He's too dreadfully civil. He thinks I can do something."

"Then why do you say he knows you can't."

She was impatient; she gave it up. "Well, I don't know what he knows—except that he does want to be loved."

"Do you mean he has proposed to you to love him?"

"Loved by the great heart of the public—speaking through its natural organ. He wants to be—well, where Beadel-Muffet is."

"Oh, I hope not!" said Bight with grim amusement.

His friend was struck with his tone. "Do you mean it's coming on for Beadel-Muffet—what we talked about?" And then as he looked at her so queerly that her curiosity took a jump: "It really and truly is? Has anything happened?"

"The rummest thing in the world—since I last saw you. We're wonderful, you know, you and I together—we see. And what we see always takes place, usually within the week. It wouldn't be believed. But it will do for us. At any rate it's high sport."

"Do you mean," she asked, "that his scare has literally begun?"

He meant, clearly, quite as much as he said. "He has written to me again he wants to see me, and we've an appointment for Monday."

"Then why isn't it the old game?"

"Because it isn't. He wants to gather from me, as I have served him before, if something can't be done. On a souvent besoin d'un plus petit que soi. Keep quiet, and we shall see something."

This was very well; only his manner visibly had for 332