“Yes,” said Mrs. Pasmer, with a sigh of deep appreciation.  “What gifted people!”

“I understand that the son inherits all his father’s talent.”

“He sketches delightfully.”

“And Mavering wrote.  Why, he was our class poet!” cried Munt, remembering the fact with surprise and gratification to himself.  “He was a tremendous satirist.”

“Really?  And he seems so amiable now.”

“Oh, it was only on paper.”

“Perhaps he still keeps it up—­on wall-paper?” suggested Mrs. Pasmer.

Munt laughed at the little joke with a good-will that flattered the veteran flatterer.  “I should like to ask him that some time.  Will you lend it to me?”

“Yes, if such a sayer of good things will deign to borrow—­”

“Oh, Mrs. Pasmer!” cried Munt, otherwise speechless.

“And the mother?  Do you know Mrs. Mavering?”

“Mrs. Mavering I’ve never seen.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Pasmer, with a disappointment for which Munt tried to console her.

“I’ve never even been at their place.  He asked me once a great while ago; but you know how those things are.  I’ve heard that she used to be very pretty and very gay.  They went about a great deal, to Saratoga and Cape May and such places—­rather out of our beat.”

“And now?”

“And now she’s been an invalid for a great many years.  Bedridden, I believe.  Paralysis, I think.”

Yes; Mrs. Saintsbury said something of the kind.”

“Well,” said Munt, anxious to add to the store of knowledge which this remark let him understand he had not materially increased, “I think Mrs. Mavering was the origin of the wall-paper—­or her money.  Mavering was poor; her father had started it, and Mavering turned in his talent.”

“How very interesting!  And is that the reason—­its being ancestral—­that Mr. Mavering wishes his son to go into it?”

“Is he going into it?” asked Munt.

“He’s come up here to think about it.”

“I should suppose it would be a very good thing,” said Munt.

“What a very remarkable forest!” said Mrs. Pasmer, examining it on either side, and turning quite round.  This gave her, from her place in the van of the straggling procession, a glimpse of Alice and Dan Mavering far in the rear.

“Don’t you know,” he was saying to the girl at the same moment, “it’s like some of those Dore illustrations to the Inferno, or the Wandering Jew.”

“Oh yes.  I was trying to think what it was made me think I had seen it before,” she answered.  “It must be that.  But how strange it is!” she exclaimed, “that sensation of having been there before—­in some place before where you can’t possibly have been.”

“And do you feel it here?” he asked, as vividly interested as if they two had been the first to notice the phenomenon which has been a psychical consolation to so many young observers.

“Yes,” she cried.