"It is these girls that have let the
men go by because they didn't see any good enough; they're the jolly
souls!" the one widower remarked, confidentially. "They've been at it a
long while, and they know how, and they're light-hearted as robins. They
have more fun than people who have responsibilities."
All of these lively demoiselles fluttered about Harkless with
commiserative pleasantries, and, in spite of his protestations, made him
recline in the biggest and deepest chair on the porch, where they
surfeited him with kindness and grouped about him with extra cushions and
tenderness for a man who had been injured. No one mentioned the fact that
he had been hurt; it was not spoken of, though they wished mightily he
would tell them the story they had read luridly in the public prints. They
were very good to him. One of them, in particular, a handsome, dark, kind-
eyed girl, constituted herself at once his cicerone in Rouen gossip and
his waiting-maid. She sat by him, and saw that his needs (and his not-
needs, too) were supplied and oversupplied; she could not let him move,
and anticipated his least wish, though he was now amply able to help
himself; and she fanned him as if he were a dying consumptive.
They sat on Meredith's big porch in the late twilight and ate a
substantial refection, and when this was finished, a buzz of nonsense rose
from all quarters, except the remote corners where the youthful affianced
ones had defensively stationed themselves behind a rampart of plants.
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