“Why do you say that?” I asked, a little sharply.

“Of course you don’t like it,” she replied, “but it is true.  She may be as lovely as you think her—­and I am sure she is.  She may be of good family, finely educated, and a great many more things, but all that goes for nothing beside the fact that for over five years she has been the landlady of a little hotel.”

“I do not care a snap for that!” I exclaimed.  “I like her all the better for it.  I—­”

“That makes it worse,” she interrupted, and as she spoke I could not but recollect that a similar remark had been made to me before.  “I have not the slightest doubt that you would have been perfectly willing to settle down as the landlord of a little hotel.  But if you had not—­even if you had gone on in the course which father has marked out for you, and you ought to hear him talk about you—­you might have become famous, rich, nobody knows what, perhaps President of a college, but still everybody would have known that your wife was the young woman who used to keep the Holly Sprig Inn, and asked the people who came there if they objected to a back room, and if they wanted tea or coffee for their breakfast.  Of course Mrs. Chester thought too much of you to let you consider any such foolishness.”

I made no answer to this remark.  I thought the young woman was taking a great deal upon herself.

“Of course,” she continued, “it would have been a great thing for Mrs. Chester, and I honor her that she stood up stiffly and did the thing she ought to do.  I do not know what she said when she gave you her final answer, but whatever it was it was the finest compliment she could have paid you.”

I smiled grimly.  “She likened me to a bear,” I said.  “Do you call that a compliment?”

Edith Larramie looked at me, her eyes sparkling.  “Tell me one thing,” she said.  “When she spoke to you in that way weren’t you trying to find out how she felt about the matter exclusive of the inn?”

I could not help smiling again as I assented.

“There!” she exclaimed.  “I am beginning to have the highest respect for my abilities as a forecaster of human probabilities.  It was like you to try to find out that, and it was like her to snub you.  But let’s walk on.  Would you like me to give you some advice.”

“I am afraid your advice is not worth very much,” I answered, “but I will hear it.”

“Well, then,” she said, “I advise you to fall in love with somebody else just as soon as you can.  That is the best way to get this affair out of your mind, and until you do that you won’t be worth anything.”

I felt that I now knew this girl so well that I could say anything to her.  “Very well, then,” said I; “suppose I fall in love with you?”

“That isn’t a very nice speech,” she said.  “There is a little bit of spitefulness in it.  But it doesn’t mean anything, anyway.  I am out of the competition, and that is the reason I can speak to you so freely.  Moreover, that is the reason I know so much about the matter.  I am not biassed.  But you need have no trouble—­there’s Amy.”