before she was Mrs. Colfax.  He thought he had heard of them?  Oh, probably.  They were well-known people—­at least they had been in the old days—­though New York was so very much changed.  She rarely went back there now, the voyage was so long, but when she did she was quite bewildered.  Her own family used to be so conservative, keeping to a little circle of relatives and friends that rarely went north of Boston or south of Philadelphia; but now when she made them a visit she found them surrounded by a lot of people who had never been heard of before.  She thought it a pity that in a country where there were so few distinctions, those which existed shouldn’t be observed.

It was a relief to Strange when the sweet, languorous monologue, punctuated from time to time by a response from himself, or an interjectory remark from one of the others, came to an end, and they proceeded to the patio for coffee.

It was served in a corner shaded by flowering vines, and presided over by a huge green and gray parrot in a cage.  The host and hostess being denied this form of refreshment took advantage of the moment to stroll arm in arm around the court, leaving Miss Jarrott in tAªte-A -tAªte with Strange.  He noticed that as this lady led the way her figure was as lithe as a young girl’s and her walk singularly graceful.  “No one is ever old with a carriage like yours,” Miss Jarrott had been told, and she believed it.  She dressed and talked according to her figure, and, had it not been for features too heavily accentuated in nose and chin, she might have produced an impression of eternal spring-tide.  As it was, the comic papers would have found her cruelly easy to caricature, had she been a statesman.  The parrot screamed at her approach, croaking out an air, slightly off the key: 

P
    “Up and down the ba-by goes,
    Turning out its lit-tle ...” 
P

Tempted to lapse into prose, it proceeded to cry: 

“Wa-al, Polly, how are you to-day?  Wa-al, pretty well for an old gal,” after which there was a minute of inarticulate grumbling.  When coffee was poured, and the young man’s cigarette alight, Miss Jarrott seized the opportunity which her sister-in-law’s soft murmur at the table had not allowed her.

“It’s really funny you should be Mr. Strange, because I’ve known a young lady of the same name.  That is, I haven’t known her exactly, but I’ve known about her.”

Not to show his irritation at the renewal of the subject, Strange presumed she was one of the Stranges of Virginia, with right and title to be so called.

“She is and she isn’t,” Miss Jarrot replied.  “I know you’ll think it funny to hear me speak so; but I can’t explain I’m like that.  I can’t always explain.  I say lots and lots of things that people just have to interpret for themselves It’s funny I should be like that, isn’t it?  I wonder why?  Can you tell me why?  And this Miss Strange—­I never knew her really—­not really—­but I feel as if I had.  I always feel that way about friends of friends of mine.  I feel as if they were my friends, too.  I’d go through fire and water for them.  Of course that’s just an expression but you know what I mean, now don’t you?”