Our Mr. Wrenn

She touched his hand in the fleetingest of grasps.

"Yes. Good night, Miss Nash," he quavered.

A morning of planning his conduct so that in accompanying Istra Nash to the Tate Gallery he might be the faithful shadow and beautiful transcript of Mittyford, Ph.D. As a result, when he stood before the large canvases of Mr. Watts at the Tate he was so heavy and correctly appreciative, so ready not to enjoy the stories in the pictures of Millais, that Istra suddenly demanded: "Oh, my dear child, I have taken a great deal on my hands. You've got to learn to play. You don't know how to play. Come. I shall teach you. I don't know why I should, either. But--come."

She explained as they left the gallery: "First, the art of riding on the buses. Oh, it is an art, you know. You must appreciate the flower-girls and the gr-r-rand young bobbies. You must learn to watch for the blossoms on the restaurant terraces and roll on the grass in the parks. You're much too respectable to roll on the grass, aren't you? I'll try ever so hard to teach you not to be. And we'll go to tea. How many kinds of tea are there?"

"Oh, Ceylon and English Breakfast and--oh--Chinese."

"B--"

"And golf tees!" he added, excitedly, as they took a seat in front atop the bus.

"Puns are a beginning at least," she reflected.

"But how many kinds of tea are there, Istra?... Oh say, I hadn't ought to--"

"Course; call me Istra or anything else. Only, you mustn't call my bluff. What do I know about tea? All of us who play are bluffers, more or less, and we are ever so polite in pretending not to know the others are bluffing.... There's lots of kinds of tea. In the New York Chinatown I saw once--Do you know Chinatown? Being a New-Yorker, I don't suppose you do."

"Oh yes. And Italiantown. I used to wander round there."

"Well, down at the Seven Flowery Kingdoms Chop Suey and American Cooking there's tea at five dollars a cup that they advertise is grown on `cloud-covered mountain-tops.' I suppose when the tops aren't cloud-covered they only charge three dollars a cup.... But, serious-like, there's really only two kinds of teas--those you go to to meet the man you love and ought to hate, and those you give to spite the women you hate but ought to--hate! Isn't that lovely and complicated? That's playing. With words. My aged parent calls it `talking too much and not saying anything.' Note that last--not saying anything! It's one of the rules in playing that mustn't be broken."