When he was fairly gone Richard Amory broke into a half laugh.
"What a queer fellow he is!" he said.
Bertha returned to her place by the fire, taking from the mantel a little screen of peacock feathers and shading her face with it.
"Do you know," she said, "that he rarely leaves the house without one of us making that remark, and yet it always has an illusive air of being entirely new."
"Well," remarked Richard, "he is a queer fellow, and there's no denying it. Imagine a fellow like that coolly rambling about with neat packages of bonbons in his fastidious overcoat pocket, to be bestowed on children without any particular claim on him. Why does he do it?"
"It doesn't exactly arise from enthusiasm awakened by their infant charms," said Bertha, "and he never professed that it did."
"But he must care for them a little," returned Richard.
"The fact is that you don't know what he cares for," said Bertha, "and it is rather one of his fascinations. I suppose that is really what we mean by saying he is a queer fellow."
"At all events," said Richard, amiably, "he is a nice fellow, and one can manage to subsist on that. All I complain of is that he hasn't any object. A man ought to have an object—two or three, if he likes."