Chapter VIII

THAT sense of quantities, separate or mixed, was
indeed doubtless what most prevailed at first for our
slightly gasping American pair; it found utterance
for them in their frequent remark to each other that
they had no- one but themselves to thank. It dropped
from Milly more than once that if she had ever
known it was so easy! though her exclamation
mostly ended without completing her idea. This,
however, was a trifle to Mrs. Stringham, who cared
little whether she meant that in this case she would
have come sooner. She couldn't have come sooner,
and she perhaps, on the contrary, meant for it
would have been like her that she wouldn't have
come at all; why it was so easy being at any rate
a matter as to which her companion had begun
quickly to pick up views. Susie kept some of these
lights for the present to herself, since, freely com
municated, they might have been a little disturbing;
with which, moreover, the quantities that we speak
of as surrounding the two ladies were, in many cases,
quantities of things and of other things to talk
about. Their immediate lesson, accordingly, was
that they just had been caught up by the incalculable
strength of a wave that was actually holding them

[[185]]

p184 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p185w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p186

v?