“Too many of us admirers, he thinks?” laughed Elizabeth.  “For he is bright enough when he takes the trouble to speak, but generally he doesn’t seem to consider any one of sufficient importance to amuse.”

“That is not so,” cried Katie, “you are mistaken.  But you don’t know Stephen very well,” she added.  “What a pity that you are not living here, then you would, and then we should have known each other all our lives, instead of only since we went to school together.  What good times we had at Madam Flamingo’s.  There you sit, now, and look as meekly reproving as if you had’nt invented that name for her yourself.  It was so good, it has stood by her ever since.”

“Did I?  I had forgotten it.”

“Perhaps, at least, you remember the red shawl that got her the nickname?  It was really something nice,—­the shawl, I mean, but the old dame was so ridiculously proud of it and so perpetually flaunting it, she must have thought it very becoming.  We girls were tired of the sight of it.  And one day, when you were provoked with her about something and left her and came into the schoolroom after hours, you walked up to a knot of us, and with your air of scorn said something about Madam Flamingo.  Didn’t it spread like wildfire?  Our set will call that venerable dame ‘Flamingo’ to the end of her days.”

“I suppose we shall, but I had no recollection that it was I who gave her the name.”

“Yes, you gave it to her,” repeated Katie.  “You may be very sure I should not have forgotten it if I had been so clever.  Those were happy days for all their petty tribulations,” she added after a pause.

Elizabeth looked at her sitting there meditative.

“I should think these were happy days for you, Katie.  What more can you want than you have now?”

“Oh, the roc’s eggs, I suppose,” answered the girl.  “No, seriously, I am pretty likely to get what I want most.  I am happy enough, only not absolutely happy quite yet.”

“Why not?”

“Our good minister would say it was not intended for mortals.”

“If I felt like being quite content I should not give it up because somebody else said it was too much for me.”

“Oh, well,” said Katie, laughing, “it has nothing to do with our good Parson Shurtleff, anyway.”

“I thought not.  What, then?”

The other did not answer, but sat looking out of the window with eyes that were not studying the landscape.  Whether her little troubles dissolved into the cloudless sky, like mist too thin to take shape, or whether she preferred to keep her perplexities to herself is uncertain, but when she spoke it was about another reminiscence of school days.