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civility to oppose to this she wound up with:  〃But we're all good;

you know!〃



〃He's a genius … you'll love him!〃 were words that recurred to our

aspirant before the Friday; suggesting among many things that

geniuses were not invariably loveable。  However; it was all the

better if there was an element that would make tutorship absorbing:

he had perhaps taken too much for granted it would only disgust

him。  As he left the villa after his interview he looked up at the

balcony and saw the child leaning over it。  〃We shall have great

larks!〃 he called up。



Morgan hung fire a moment and then gaily returned:  〃By the time

you come back I shall have thought of something witty!〃



This made Pemberton say to himself 〃After all he's rather nice。〃







CHAPTER II







On the Friday he saw them all; as Mrs。 Moreen had promised; for her

husband had come back and the girls and the other son were at home。

Mr。 Moreen had a white moustache; a confiding manner and; in his

buttonhole; the ribbon of a foreign order … bestowed; as Pemberton

eventually learned; for services。  For what services he never

clearly ascertained:  this was a point … one of a large number …

that Mr。 Moreen's manner never confided。  What it emphatically did

confide was that he was even more a man of the world than you might

first make out。  Ulick; the firstborn; was in visible training for

the same profession … under the disadvantage as yet; however; of a

buttonhole but feebly floral and a moustache with no pretensions to

type。  The girls had hair and figures and manners and small fat

feet; but had never been out alone。  As for Mrs。 Moreen Pemberton

saw on a nearer view that her elegance was intermittent and her

parts didn't always match。  Her husband; as she had promised; met

with enthusiasm Pemberton's ideas in regard to a salary。  The young

man had endeavoured to keep these stammerings modest; and Mr。

Moreen made it no secret that HE found them wanting in 〃style。〃  He

further mentioned that he aspired to be intimate with his children;

to be their best friend; and that he was always looking out for

them。  That was what he went off for; to London and other places …

to look out; and this vigilance was the theory of life; as well as

the real occupation; of the whole family。  They all looked out; for

they were very frank on the subject of its being necessary。  They

desired it to be understood that they were earnest people; and also

that their fortune; though quite adequate for earnest people;

required the most careful administration。  Mr。 Moreen; as the

parent bird; sought sustenance for the nest。  Ulick invoked support

mainly at the club; where Pemberton guessed that it was usually

served on green cloth。  The girls used to do up their hair and

their frocks themselves; and our young man felt appealed to to be

glad; in regard to Morgan's education; that; though it must

naturally be of the best; it didn't cost too much。  After a little

he WAS glad; forgetting at times his own needs in the interest

inspired by the child's character and culture and the pleasure of

making easy terms for him。



During the first weeks of their acquaintance Morgan had been as

puzzling as a page in an unknown language … altogether different

from the obvious little Anglo…Saxons who had misrepresented

childhood to Pemberton。  Indeed the whole mystic volume in which

the boy had been amateurishly bound demanded some practice in

translation。  To…day; after a considerable interval; there is

something phantasmagoria; like a prismatic reflexion or a serial

novel; in Pemberton's memory of the queerness of the Moreens。  If

it were not for a few tangible tokens … a lock of Morgan's hair cut

by his own hand; and the half…dozen letters received from him when

they were disjoined … the whole episode and the figures peopling it

would seem too inconsequent for anything but dreamland。  Their

supreme quaintness was their success … as it appeared to him for a

while at the time; since he had never seen a family so brilliantly

equipped for failure。  Wasn't it success to have kept him so

hatefully long?  Wasn't it success to have drawn him in that first

morning at dejeuner; the Friday he came … it was enough to MAKE one

superstitious … so that he utterly committed himself; and this not

by calculation or on a signal; but from a happy instinct which made

them; like a band of gipsies; work so neatly together?  They amused

him as much as if they had really been a band of gipsies。  He was

still young and had not seen much of the world … his English years

had been properly arid; therefore the reversed conventions of the

Moreens … for they had THEIR desperate proprieties … struck him as

topsy…turvy。  He had encountered nothing like them at Oxford; still

less had any such note been struck to his younger American ear

during the four years at Yale in which he had richly supposed

himself to be reacting against a Puritan strain。  The reaction of

the Moreens; at any rate; went ever so much further。  He had

thought himself very sharp that first day in hitting them all off

in his mind with the 〃cosmopolite〃 label。  Later it seemed feeble


and colourless … confessedly helplessly provisional。



He yet when he first applied it felt a glow of joy … for an

instructor he was still empirical … rise from the apprehension that

living with them would really he to see life。  Their sociable

strangeness was an intimation of that … their chatter of tongues;

their gaiety and good humour; their infinite dawdling (they were

always getting themselves up; but it took forever; and Pemberton

had once found Mr。 Moreen shaving in the drawing…room); their

French; their Italian and; cropping up in the foreign fluencies;

their cold tough slices of American。  They lived on macaroni and

coffee … they had these articles prepared in perfection … but they

knew recipes for a hundred other dishes。  They overflowed with

music and song; were always humming and catching each other up; and

had a sort of professional acquaintance with Continental cities。

They talked of 〃good places〃 as if they had been pickpockets or

strolling players。  They had at Nice a villa; a carriage; a piano

and a banjo; and they went to official parties。  They were a

perfect calendar of the 〃days〃 of their friends; which Pemberton

knew them; when they were indisposed; to get out of bed to go to;

and which made the week larger than life when Mrs。 Moreen talked of

them with Paula and Amy。  Their initiations gave their new inmate

at first an almost dazzling sense of culture。  Mrs。 Moreen had

translated something at some former period … an author whom it made

Pemberton feel borne never to have heard of。  They could imitate

Venetian and sing Neapolitan; and when they wanted to say something

very particular communicated with each other in an ingenious

dialect of their own; an elastic spoken cipher which Pemberton at

first took for some patois of one of their countries; but which he

〃caught on to〃 as he would not have grasped provincial development

of Spanish or German。



〃It's the family language … Ultramoreen;〃 Morgan explained to him

drolly enough; but the boy rarely condescended to use it himself;

though he dealt in colloquial Latin as if he had been a little

prelate。



Among all the 〃days〃 with which Mrs。 Moreen's memory was taxed she

managed to squeeze in one of her own; which her friends sometimes

forgot。  But the house drew a frequented air from the number of

fine people who were freely named there and from several mysterious

men with foreign titles and English clothes whom Morgan called the

princes and who; on sofas with the girls; talked French very loud …

though sometimes with some oddity of accent … as if to show they

were saying nothing improper。  Pemberton wondered how the princes

could ever propose in that tone and so publicly:  he took for

granted cynically that this was what was desired of them。  Then

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