_she_ would call ideal for two impoverished young aristocrats to start life
on nothing but affection and self-confidence.

It did seem as if the choicest fruit always came to _her_ specked.

"Never mind," Guy encouraged her. "Just give me ten years. It will be a
little hard on you at first, Bibi dear, I know, but it would be harder at
your father's now. And it won't be long!"

There was only one comment of whose intention Bessie was uncertain: "So Guy
is to continue carrying you over the bad places, Bessie?"

Hm! She had been thinking it rather a fine thing for _her_ to do. And that
appealed to her.

"And think what an amusing anecdote it will make after a while, Guy,--how,
with all your worldly goods tied up in a red bandanna, and your wife on
your arm instead of her father's doorstep, you set out to make your
fortune, and to live meanwhile in the City of Un-Brotherly Love!"

But Bessie had the standards of an open-handed people to whom economy was
not a virtue. There had always been on her mother's table for every meal
"salt-risin' light bread" and corn pone or griddle-cakes, half a dozen
kinds of preserves, the staples in proportion. Her mother would have been
humiliated had there been any noticeable diminution in the supply when the
meal was over; and she and the cook would have had a council of war had a
guest failed to eat and praise any single dish.

Bessie had not realized how inglorious their meagreness would be, until
Mrs. Grey, at the daughter's table, grew unctuously reminiscent about the