cared; but when you go and make a bad thing of it yourself, with your
eyes open, there's a reluctance to place the responsibility where it
belongs that doesn't occur in the other case. Dunham, do you think it
altogether ridiculous that I should feel there was something sacred in
the money? When I remember how hard my poor old father worked to get
it together, it seems wicked that I should have stupidly wasted it on
the venture I did. I want to get it back; I want to make money. And so
I'm going out to Italy with you, to waste more. I don't respect myself
as I should if I were on a Pullman palace car, speeding westward.
I'll own I like this better."

"Oh, it's all right, Staniford," said his friend. "The voyage will do
you good, and you'll have time to think everything over, and start
fairer when you get back."

"That girl," observed Staniford, with characteristic abruptness, "is
a type that is commoner than we imagine in New England. We fair people
fancy we are the only genuine Yankees. I guess that's a mistake. There
must have been a good many dark Puritans. In fact, we always think of
Puritans as dark, don't we?"

"I believe we do," assented Dunham. "Perhaps on account of
their black clothes."

"Perhaps," said Staniford. "At any rate, I'm so tired of the blonde
type in fiction that I rather like the other thing in life. Every
novelist runs a blonde heroine; I wonder why. This girl has the clear
Southern pallor; she's of the olive hue; and her eyes are black as
sloes,--not that I know what sloes are. Did she remind you of anything
in particular?"