"Yes, certainly. People are always brave, and beautiful, and good, in
books. An author may make them do and say just what he and all the world
want them to, and it all seems right. And then they do such splendidly
impossible things!"

"How do they?"

"Why, now, if you and I were in a book at this moment, instead of
standing on this lawn, I might be a knight slaying a great dragon that
was just coming to destroy you, and you--"

"Hope, Hope!" rang the voice from the garden, nearer and more
imperiously.

"And I--might be saved by another knight dashing in upon you, like that
voice upon your sentence," said Hope, smiling.

"No, no," answered Abel, laughing, "that shouldn't be in the book. I
should slay the great dragon who would desolate all Delafield with the
swishing of his scaly tail; then you would place a wreath upon my head,
and all the people would come out and salute me for saving the Princess
whom they loved, and I"--said Abel, after a momentary pause, a shade more
gravely, and in a tone a little lower--"and I, as I rode away, should not
wonder that they loved her."

He looked across the lawn under the pine-trees as if he were thinking of
some story that he had been actually reading. Hope smiled no longer, but
said, quietly,

"Mr. Newt, I am wanted. I must go in. Good-morning!" And she moved away.