"So I have understood. Then what are you thanking me for?"
"For what you are doing for—." his hesitation was barely perceptible—"my mother."
"Oh!" Eileen looked blank. "I thought you meant for my music."
His face showed vast relief. "Oh, you were talking of your music! Of course, of course, how stupid of me! That is what has drawn me from my hole, like a rat to the Pied Piper, and I do thank you most sincerely. But being drawn, what I most wished to thank the Piper for was—"
"Your mother pays the Piper for that," she broke in.
He smiled but tossed his head. "Money! what is that?"
"It is more than I deserve for mere companionship—pleasant drives and theatres."
He did not accept her delicate reticence.
"But you have altered her wonderfully!" he cried.
"Oh, I have not," she cried, doubly startled. "It's just nothing that I have done—nothing." Then she felt her modesty had put her foot in a bog-hole. Unseeingly he helped her out.