"Why, a woman may be anything—except too tall," responded Cope candidly.
"But if she wants to be stately?"
"Well, there was Queen Victoria."
"You incorrigible! I hope I'm not so short as that! Sit down, again; we must be more on a level. And you, Mr. Randolph, may stand and look down on us both. I'm sure you have been doing so, anyway, for the past ten minutes!"
"By no means, I assure you," returned Randolph soberly.
Soberly. For the young man had slipped in that "sir." And he had been so kindly about Randolph's five foot seven and a bit over. And he had shown himself so damnably tender toward a man fairly advanced within the shadow of the fifties—a man who, if not an acknowledged outcast from the joys of life, would soon be lagging superfluous on their rim.
Randolph stood before them, looking, no doubt, a bit vacant and inexpressive. "Please go and get Amy," Mrs. Phillips said to him. "I see she's preparing to give way to some one else."
Amy—who was a blonde girl of twenty or more—came back with him pleasantly and amiably enough; and her aunt—or whatever she should turn out to be—was soon able to lay her tongue again to the syllables of the interesting name of Bertram.
Cope, thus finally introduced, repeated the facial expressions which he had employed already beside the tea-table. But he added no new one; and he found fewer words than the occasion prompted, and even required. He continued talking with Mrs. Phillips, and he threw an occasional remark toward Randolph; but now that all obstacles were removed from free converse with the divinity of the samovar he had less to say to her than before. Presently the elder woman, herself no whit offended, began to figure the younger one as a bit nonplused.
"Never mind, Amy," she said. "Don't pity him, and don't scorn him. He's really quite self-possessed and quite chatty. Or"—suddenly to Cope himself—"have you shown us already your whole box of tricks?"