I looked across the street at Bohm and Charley and Kitty and Gazza.  They were now staring about them in all their perfection of stare:  small Charley in a sleek slate-colored suit, as neat as any little barber; Bohm, massive, portentous, his strong shoes and gloves the chief note in his dress, and about his whole firm frame a heavy mechanical strength, a look as of something that did something rapidly and accurately when set going—­cut or cracked or ground or smashed something better and faster than it had ever been cut or cracked or ground or smashed before, and would take your arms and legs off if you didn’t stand well back from it; it was only in Bohm’s eye and lips that you saw he wasn’t made entirely of brass and iron, that champagne and shoulders decolletes received a punctual share of his valuable time.  And there was Kitty, too, just the wife for Bohm, so soon as she could divorce her husband, to whom she had united herself before discovering that all she married him for, his old Knickerbocker name, was no longer in the slightest degree necessary for social acceptance; while she could feed people, her trough would be well thronged.  Kitty was neat, Kitty was trig, Kitty was what Beverly would call “swagger “; her skilful tailor-made clothes sheathed her closely and gave her the excellent appearance of a well-folded English umbrella; it was in her hat that she had gone wrong—­a beautiful hat in itself, one which would have wholly become Hortense; but for poor Kitty it didn’t do at all.  Yes, she was a well folded English umbrella, only the umbrella had for its handle the head of a bulldog or the leg of a ballet-dancer.  And these were the Replacers whom Beverly’s clear-sighted eyes saw swarming round the temple of his civilization, pushing down the aisles, climbing over the backs of the benches, walking over each other’s bodies, and seizing those front seats which his family had sat in since New York had been New York; and so the wise fellow very prudently took every step that would insure the Replacers’ inviting him to occupy one of his own chairs.  I had almost forgotten little Gazza, the Italian nobleman, who sold old furniture to new Americans.  Gazza was not looking at the old furniture of Kings Port, which must have filled his Vatican soul with contempt; he was strolling back and forth in the street, with his head in the air, humming, now loudly, now softly “La-la, la-la, E quando a la predica in chiesa siederia, la-la-la-la;” and I thought to myself that, were I the Pope, I should kick him into the Tiber.

When Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael came back with the keys and their custodian, Bohm was listening to the slow, clear words of Charley, in which he evidently found something that at length interested him—­a little.  Bohm, it seemed, did not often speak himself:  possibly once a week.  His way was to let other people speak to him when there were signs in his face that he was hearing anything which they said, it was a high compliment to them, and of course Charley could