. This however was no reason for letting the
least thing go. Strether had the next minute proceeded as roundly as if with an
advantage to follow up. »Of course I'm a busybody, if you want to fight the case
to the death; but after all mainly in the sense of having known you and having
given you such attention as you kindly permitted when you were in jackets and
knickerbockers. Yes - it was knickerbockers, I'm busybody enough to remember
that; and that you had, for your age - I speak of the first far-away time -
tremendously stout legs. Well, we want you to break. Your mother's heart's
passionately set upon it, but she has above and beyond that excellent arguments
and reasons. I've not put them into her head - I needn't remind you how little
she's a person who needs that. But they exist - you must take it from me as a
friend both of hers and yours - for myself as well. I didn't invent them, I
didn't originally work them out; but I understand them, I think I can explain
them - by which I mean make you actively do them justice; and that's why you see
me here. You had better know the worst at once. It's a question of an immediate
rupture and an immediate return. I've been conceited enough to dream I can sugar
that pill. I take at any rate the greatest interest in the question. I took it
already before I left home; and I don't mind telling you that, altered as you
are, I take it still more now that I've seen you. You're older and - I don't
know what to call it! - more of a handful; but you're by so much the more, I
seem to make out, to our purpose.«
    »Do I strike you as improved?« Strether was to recall that Chad had at this
point enquired.
    He was likewise to recall - and it had to count for some time as his
greatest comfort - that it had been given him, as they said at Woollett, to
reply with some presence of mind: »I haven't the least idea.« He was really for
a while to like thinking he had been positively hard. On the point of conceding
that Chad had improved in appearance, but that to the question of appearance the
remark must be confined, he checked even that compromise and left his
reservation bare.
