I often wonder where all the stickiness comes from that she manages to
communicate from her person to the handles of doors, backs of chairs
and other such places where you are most likely to set your hand
unconsciously. Henry has a theory about it oozing from the pores of
her skin, and says she conceals some inexhaustible sources of grime
which is constantly rising to the surface. In which case you can't
entirely blame The Kid.

Under the circumstances, however, we feel that she ought to practise
more restraint. Always when she is most thickly coated in dirt and
varnished with the glutinous substance already referred to, does she
most strongly feel the calls of affection. Then is the moment when she
flings her arms about Henry and presses long kisses on his clean
collar, or gently caresses the entire surface of my new blouse.
Nothing, I have remarked, can stir her demonstrative nature so much as
the sight of Henry and me arrayed in all the glory of evening attire.
The merest glimpse of my georgette theatre gown, or the chaste folds of
Henry's tie, scintillating collar and shirt front send her flying to us
with hands that fondle and lips that cling. If we repel her and
compromise by kissing the middle of her head, she has a way of giving
us haunting looks that, after we have sallied forth to the halls of
pleasure, can make us feel uncomfortable for the entire evening.

'Yes, when The Kid is grown up,' Henry went on, 'perhaps she'll have
the success that has been denied to us, old girl.'

I was about to reply when my attention was arrested by a confused
murmur of voices in the hall. I distinguished Elizabeth's, and as the
other was a man's tones, I supposed she was having a little badinage at