Whereas, her daughter
was a person readily to be understood in all parts of the world where
men have eyes--as well by the homekeeping as by the travelled. Eustace
Eubanks, more or less a man of the world by virtue of that adventurous
trip to the Holy Land, understood her at one glance, as did Arthur
Updyke, who had fared abroad to the college of pharmacy and knew things.
But she was also lucid as crystal to G. Brown and Creston Fancett, whose
knowledge of the outside world was somewhat affected by their experience
of it, which was nothing. To all seven of the ages was this woman
comprehensible. Old Bolivar Kent, eighty-six and shuffling his short
steps to the grave not far ahead, understood her with one look; the but
adolescent Guy McCormick, hovering tragically on the verge of his first
public shave, divined her quite as capably; the middle-yeared Westley
Keyts read her so unerringly on a day when she first regaled his vision
that he toiled for half an hour as one entranced, disengaging what he
believed to be porter-house steaks long after the porter-house line in
the beef under his hand had been passed.
In short, Miss Lansdale was understood spontaneously--to borrow a phrase
from the _Argus_--"by each and all who had the good fortune to be
present," for she was dowered with that quick-drawing charm which has
worked a familiar spell upon the sons of men in all times.
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