“No, I do not know it, but I perceive that you are talking an allegory at me.”

“Not at you, to you,” she corrected.

“You write very short letters to me, nowadays.”

“Your letters are not suggestive enough,” she said, archly.

“Like my conversation.  As poor a talker as I am, I am a better talker than writer.  And you—­you write a dozen times better than you talk.”

“I’m sorry I’m so unentertaining to-night.  When Linnet writes she says:  “‘I wish I could talk to you,’ and when I talk I think:  ’I wish I could write it all to you.’”

“As some one said of some one who could write better than he talked, ’He has plenty of bank notes, but he carries no small change, in his pocket.’”

“It is so apt to be too small,” she answered, somewhat severely.

“I see you are above talking the nonsense that some girls talk.  What do you do to get rested from your thoughts?”

How Marjorie laughed!

“Hollis, do talk to me instead of writing.  And I’ll write to you instead of talking.”

“That is, you wish me near to you and yourself far away from me.  That is the only way that we can satisfy each other.  Isn’t that Miss Prudence coming?”

“And the master.  They did not know I would have an escort home.  But do come all the way, father will like to hear you talk about the places you have visited.”

“I travel, I don’t visit places.  I expect to go to London and Paris by and by.  Our buyer has been getting married and that doesn’t please the firm; he wanted to take his wife with him, but they vetoed that.  They say a married man will not attend strictly to business; see what a premium is paid to bachelorhood.  I shall understand laces well enough soon:  I can pick a piece of imitation out of a hundred real pieces now.  Did Linnet like the handkerchief and scarf?”

“You should have seen her!  Hasn’t she spoken of them?”

“No, she was too full of other things.”

“Marriage isn’t all in getting ready, to Linnet,” said Marjorie, seriously, “I found her crying one day because she was so happy and didn’t deserve to be.”

“Will is a good fellow,” said Hollis.  “I wish I were half as good.  But I am so contradictory, so unsatisfied and so unsatisfying.  I understand myself better than I want to, and yet I do not understand myself at all.”

“That is because you are growing,” said Marjorie, with her wise air.  “I haven’t settled down into a real Marjorie yet.  I shouldn’t know my own picture unless I painted it myself.”

“We are two rather dangerous people, aren’t we?” laughed Hollis.  “We will steer clear of each other, as Will would say, until we can come to an understanding.”

“Unless we can help each other,” Marjorie answered.  “But I don’t believe you need to be pulled apart, but only to be let alone to grow—­that is, if the germ is perfect.”