"
"Young Pearson?"
"Yes."
"Clever lad. Confident. But brash. Just what his father used to be."
"He praised her playing. Cope sat dumb. And next morning he hurried away
before breakfast. You know what kind of a morning it was. Anything very
pressing at the University on a Saturday morning at eight?"
"I hardly know."
"How about this sudden new friend?" Foster twitched in his chair. "Medora,"
he went on, "seems to have no special fancy for him. She even objects to
his calling Cope 'Bert.' Of course he sings. And he seems to be self-
possessed and clever. But 'self-possessed'--that doesn't express it. He was
so awfully, so publicly, at home; at least that's as I gather it. Always
hanging over the other man's chair; always finding a reason to put his hand
on his shoulder...."
"Body-guard? No wonder Pearson came to the fore."
"I don't know. What I've heard makes me think of----"
And here, Foster, speaking with a keen and complicated acerbity, recalled
how, during earlier years of travel, he had had opportunity to observe a
young married couple at a Saratoga hotel. They had made their partiality
too public, and an elderly lady not far away in the vast "parlor" had
audibly complained that they brought the manners of the bed-chamber into
the drawing-room.
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