her nature had been longer in the crucible of life, it had necessarily undergone a certain change; but the critical observer, had he hazarded the conjecture that at Amelie's age Mrs. Emsworth had been very like Amelie, would, though he was quite wrong about it, have had the satisfaction of making a really clever mistake. For Mrs. Emsworth at that age had been possessed of a somewhat serious and joyless nature; her present joie de vivre was the result of her experience of life, the conviction, thoughtfully arrived at, that joy is the thing worth living for. But Amelie's exuberance was the result, not of philosophy, but of instinct; she laughed like a child merely because she laughed. And the critical observer, if, after making one clever mistake, he had been willing to hazard another, and had guessed that at Mrs. Emsworth's age Amelie would be like Mrs. Emsworth, would have risked a mistake that was not clever. For it is very seldom that experience confirms one's childish instincts; in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it either eradicates them altogether, or, at any rate, modifies them almost beyond recognition. Mrs. Emsworth had won back to what had not been in her an instinct when she was a child; and it was more unlikely that Amelie, when a woman, would retain the instincts that were now hers.
At the present moment Amelie's enthusiasm was largely taken up with food.
' Pápa, you have an angelic nature,' she said; ' and how you can sit there chewing crackers and sipping milk without throwing the table things at me I can't conjecture.'
' Habit of self-control, Amelie,' said he, his eyes smiling at her; ' perhaps you will learn it some day. When does your mother come down?'
' This afternoon, with the two English folk. She's been telephoning all the morning. When mámma gets hold, real tight hold, of the telephone, she doesn't let go under an hour or two. Now, I'm not like that. The moment I ring
