  The delightful people darted after it with cries of joy, Margaret leading them, and not till the meal was half over did they realize that the principal guest had taken no part in the chase.  There was no common topic.  Mrs. Wilcox, whose life had been spent in the service of husband and sons, had little to say to strangers who had never shared it, and whose age was half her own.  Clever talk alarmed her, and withered her delicate imaginings; it was the social; counterpart of a motorcar, all jerks, and she was a wisp of hay, a flower.  Twice she deplored the weather, twice criticized the train service on the Great Northern Railway.  They vigorously assented, and rushed on, and when she inquired whether there was any news of Helen, her hostess was too much occupied in placing Rothenstein to answer.  The question was repeated: "I hope that your sister is safe in Germany by now." Margaret checked herself and said, "Yes, thank you; I heard on Tuesday." But the demon of vociferation was in her, and the next moment she was off again.
    "Only on Tuesday, for they live right away at Stettin.  Did you ever know any one living at Stettin?"
    "Never," said Mrs. Wilcox gravely, while her neighbour, a young man low down in the Education Office, began to discuss what people who lived at Stettin ought to look like.  Was there such a thing as Stettininity?  Margaret swept on.
    "People at Stettin drop things into boats out of overhanging warehouses.  At least, our cousins do, but aren't particularly rich.  The town isn't interesting, except for a clock that rolls its eyes, and the view of the Oder, which truly is something special.  Oh, Mrs. Wilcox, you would love the Oder!  The river, or rather rivers--there seem to be dozens of them--are intense blue, and the plain they run through an intensest green."
    "Indeed!  That sounds like a most beautiful view, Miss Schlegel."
    "So I say, but Helen, who will muddle things, says no, it's like music.  The course of the Oder is to be like music.  It's obliged to remind her of a symphonic poem.  The part by the landing-stage is in B minor, if I remember rightly, but lower down things get extremely mixed.  There is a slodgy theme in several keys at once, meaning mud-banks, and another for the navigable
