We shall not expect to pass our days in gazing at sunsets and
walking in the moonlight, you know. It is not every woman who can
marry the man she loves best. While the right to select and to woo
is usurped by the masculine portion of the community, it must,
perforce, be Hobson's choice with an uncountable majority of
feminines. I should not complain. The stall allotted to me by
Hobson--alias Fate--might hold a worse-conditioned animal than my
worshipping swain."

"What a wicked rattle you are!" Mabel said, affecting to box her
ears. "I could not love you if I believed you to be in earnest. As
to your figure of the stabled steed--this disapproving customer has
the consolation that she need not accept him, unless she wishes to
do so. She has the invaluable privilege of saying 'no' as often and
obstinately as she pleases."

"I deny it," said Rosa, perversely. "Parents, in this age, do not
make a custom of locking up refractory daughters in nunneries or
garrets until they consent to wed Baron Buncombe or my Lord Nozoo,
but there are, nevertheless, compulsory marriages in plenty. Society
warns me to make a creditable match, upon penalty, if I decline, of
being pointed out to the succeeding--and a fast-succeeding
generation it is! as a disappointed old maid--passée belle, who
squandered her capital of fascinations, and has become a pauper upon
public toleration, while my mother, sisters, and brothers are
growing impatient at my many and profitless flirtations, and anxious
to see me 'settled.' My mother's pet text, since I was sixteen, has
been her prayerful desire that I, the last of her nestlings, should
make choice of a tenable bough and helpful partner, and set up a
separate establishment before she dies. When that event occurs, I