.«
    »Ah,« said Chad, »Mother's worth fifty of Sally!«
    »A thousand; but when you presently meet her, all the same, you'll be
meeting your mother's representative - just as I shall. I feel like the outgoing
ambassador,« said Strether, »doing honour to his appointed successor.« A moment
after speaking as he had just done he felt he had inadvertently rather cheapened
Mrs. Newsome to her son; an impression audibly reflected, as at first seen, in
Chad's prompt protest. He had recently rather failed of apprehension of the
young man's attitude and temper - remaining principally conscious of how little
worry, at the worst, he wasted; and he studied him at this critical hour with
renewed interest. Chad had done exactly what he had promised him a fortnight
previous - had accepted without another question his plea for delay. He was
waiting cheerfully and handsomely, but also inscrutably and with a slight
increase perhaps of the hardness originally involved in his acquired high
polish. He was neither excited nor depressed; was easy and acute and deliberate
- unhurried unflurried unworried, only at most a little less amused than usual.
Strether felt him more than ever a justification of the extraordinary process of
which his own absurd spirit had been the arena; he knew as their cab rolled
along, knew as he hadn't even yet known, that nothing else than what Chad had
done and had been would have led to his present showing. They had made him,
these things, what he was, and the business hadn't been easy; it had taken time
and trouble, it had cost, above all, a price. The result at any rate was now to
be offered to Sally; which Strether, so far as that was concerned, was glad to
be there to witness. Would she in the least make it out or take it in, the
result, or would she in the least care for it if she did? He scratched his chin
as he asked himself by what name, when challenged - as he was sure he should be
- he could call it for her. Oh those were determinations she must herself arrive
at; since she wanted so much to see, let her see then and welcome. She had come
out in the pride of her competence, yet it hummed in Strether's inner sense that
she practically wouldn't see.
    That this was moreover what Chad shrewdly suspected was clear from a word
that next dropped from him. »They're children; they play
