great deal."

"I don't understand how you can be so heartless about it, Basil,"
said Mrs. March, plaintively. "She is a young girl, and she has
never seen anything of the world, and of course if he keeps on
paying her attention in this way she can't help thinking that he is
interested in her. Men never can see such things as women do. They
think that, until a man has actually asked a girl to marry him, he
hasn't done anything to warrant her in supposing that he is in love
with her, or that she has any right to be in love with him."

"That is true; we can't imagine that she would be so indelicate."

"I see that you're determined to tease, my dear," said Mrs. March,
and she took up her book with an air of offence and dismissal. "If
you won't talk seriously, I hope you will think seriously, and try
to realise what we've got in for. Such a girl couldn't imagine that
we had simply got Mr Kendricks to go about with her from a romantic
wish to make her have a good time, and that he was doing it to
oblige us, and wasn't at all interested in her."

"It does look a little preposterous, even to the outsider," I
admitted.

"I am glad you are beginning to see it in that light, my dear, and
if you can think of anything to do by morning I shall be humbly
thankful. _I_ don't expect to."

"Perhaps I shall dream of something," I said more lightly than I
felt. "How would it do for you to have a little talk with her--a