loud Western voice that I do hope the children won't learn to copy. Dolly, who is, as you know, the most sensitively refined being that was ever made, is quite shocked by her. The two younger ones like her well enough, but I can't imagine her ever having any control over them. I always think one must be a little disciplined oneself in order to exercise control over others. I must confess, Anthony, that I should pack your selection off tomorrow if I had not given you my word to keep her. Cora quite agrees with me that Miss Exeter would do better on the variety stage than as a governess. I don't think there is any news. Durland has entirely given up smoking, as I always said he would--entirely of his own accord. You don't believe me, but a mother has a sort of psychic understanding of her children.
How could he help being on the other side? Yet the letter gave him something to think about. Helen of Troy--that pale, thin girl! Well, he should never understand women's estimates of other women's looks.
He laughed aloud over the note about Durland's smoking, Edna and her psychic understanding!
But thinking of psychic things--and far away in the folds of that bare Mexican valley Anthony had time to think--something psychic came from Miss Exeter's letters which he had not felt in her personality. He could not call it exactly conceit, but it was like a conviction of beauty. He did not know how to describe it, but it made him think of an essay by a novelist which he had read, when or where he could not remember--was it by Stevenson?--in which the writer had spoken of the