“You forget,” she rejoined, “that a certain neighbor of ours is going away to-morrow.  Shall I tell you the truth?  Magdalen is fretting over the departure of Francis Clare.”

Mrs. Vanstone looked up from her work with a gentle, smiling surprise.

“Surely not?” she said.  “It is natural enough that Frank should be attracted by Magdalen; but I can’t think that Magdalen returns the feeling.  Frank is so very unlike her; so quiet and undemonstrative; so dull and helpless, poor fellow, in some things.  He is handsome, I know, but he is so singularly unlike Magdalen, that I can’t think it possible—­I can’t indeed.”

“My dear good lady!” cried Miss Garth, in great amazement; “do you really suppose that people fall in love with each other on account of similarities in their characters?  In the vast majority of cases, they do just the reverse.  Men marry the very last women, and women the very last men, whom their friends would think it possible they could care about.  Is there any phrase that is oftener on all our lips than ’What can have made Mr. So-and-So marry that woman?’—­or ’How could Mrs. So-and-So throw herself away on that man?’ Has all your experience of the world never yet shown you that girls take perverse fancies for men who are totally unworthy of them?”

“Very true,” said Mrs. Vanstone, composedly.  “I forgot that.  Still it seems unaccountable, doesn’t it?”

“Unaccountable, because it happens every day!” retorted Miss Garth, good-humoredly.  “I know a great many excellent people who reason against plain experience in the same way—­who read the newspapers in the morning, and deny in the evening that there is any romance for writers or painters to work upon in modern life.  Seriously, Mrs. Vanstone, you may take my word for it—­thanks to those wretched theatricals, Magdalen is going the way with Frank that a great many young ladies have gone before her.  He is quite unworthy of her; he is, in almost every respect, her exact opposite—­and, without knowing it herself, she has fallen in love with him on that very account.  She is resolute and impetuous, clever and domineering; she is not one of those model women who want a man to look up to, and to protect them—­her beau-ideal (though she may not think it herself) is a man she can henpeck.  Well! one comfort is, there are far better men, even of that sort, to be had than Frank.  It’s a mercy he is going away, before we have more trouble with them, and before any serious mischief is done.”

“Poor Frank!” said Mrs. Vanstone, smiling compassionately.  “We have known him since he was in jackets, and Magdalen in short frocks.  Don’t let us give him up yet.  He may do better this second time.”

Miss Garth looked up in astonishment.

“And suppose he does better?” she asked.  “What then?”

Mrs. Vanstone cut off a loose thread in her work, and laughed outright.

“My good friend,” she said, “there is an old farmyard proverb which warns us not to count our chickens before they are hatched.  Let us wait a little before we count ours.”