He stopped short, at her tone, before her; then, though seeing that it represented not vagueness, but a momentary embarrassed fulness, let his exclamation come. “You surely haven’t forgotten about Mamie!”
“No, I haven’t forgotten about Mamie,” she smiled. “There’s no doubt whatever that there’s ever so much to be said for her. Mamie’s my girl!” she roundly declared.
Strether resumed for a minute his walk. “She’s really perfectly lovely, you know. Far prettier than any girl I’ve seen over here yet.”
“That’s precisely on what I perhaps most build.” And she mused a moment in her friend’s way. “I should positively like to take her in hand!”
He humoured the fancy, though indeed finally to deprecate it. “Oh but don’t, in your zeal, go over to her! I need you most and can’t, you know, be left.”
But she kept it up. “I wish they’d send her out to me!”
“If they knew you,” he returned, “they would.”
“Ah but don’t they?—after all that, as I’ve understood you you’ve told them about me?”
He had paused before her again, but he continued his course “They will—before, as you say, I’ve done.” Then he came out with the point he had wished after all most to make. “It seems to give away now his game. This is what he has been doing—keeping me along for. He has been waiting for them.”
Miss Gostrey drew in her lips. “You see a good deal in it!”