“Why do you talk of ’an elegant breeze’?” she said to her one day.

“For the same reason that you spoke of ‘a beautiful roast’ yesterday,” retorted the young lady, who might be broken-hearted, but was certainly not broken-spirited.  “I know better, and I suppose you do, but we are both careless.”

Matters drifted along in this way until a certain morning spent by Mr. Ramsay at the Browns’,—­eventful because a little thing happened which convinced him that Bijou cared for him.  He came home with a new pang substituted for those he had been enduring for a lover’s age.  After dinner he tramped off for a long walk alone, in the course of which it may fairly be presumed that he decided what course to take, for early on the following day he called especially, for the second time, upon Mr. Brown.

“I have come to tell you that I can’t come here any more,” he said, holding his hat with his accustomed grace, and going in his straightforward fashion immediately to the subject in his mind.  “And I wish to thank you for bein’ so kind to me and receivin’ me as you have done, and to tell you why I am actin’ in this way.”

“Why, what’s the matter?  Going away?  Isn’t this rather sudden?” asked Brown p?, all unsuspicious of what was to come.

“Oh, it isn’t that!  Though of course I shall be goin’.  It is that I can’t marry.  That is what it is.  You should have been told of it before, by rights, only I kept puttin’ it off.  You have a perfect right to blame me for not sayin’ so long ago, when you were good enough to admit me here on an intimate footin’.  It was a shabby, dishonorable thing of me, and I hope you’ll forgive it, rememberin’ that it was not my intention to deceive you,” said Mr. Ramsay.  “It wasn’t, now, really.”

“But, my dear fellow, of what are you accusing yourself?  There must be some mistake.  What has that got to do with your visits here?” asked Mr. Brown.

“Why, don’t you see?—­don’t you object to me bein’ thrown so much with Miss Brown, under the circumstances?” stammered out Mr. Ramsay.

“Not the least in the world,—­not the least in the world, I assure you.  Delighted to see you, I am sure, whenever you like to come,” said Mr. Brown, with hospitable warmth.  “Why should I?  There is no necessity for your marrying anybody, that I can see.  What put such a foolish idea in your head?”

“But I thought you would think—­she would think I thought—­that is—­as you might say—­”

A hearty laugh from Mr. Brown interrupted him:  “Why, you seem to have thought a good deal on the subject.  The most extraordinary idea!  Excuse my saying so.  This house is always full of young men dancing attendance on Bijou, who is as popular a girl as there is; but I don’t trouble my head about them, I can assure you.  No, indeed.  Half of them don’t want to marry Bijou, and she don’t want to marry any of them that I know of.  And I guess I shall be told when the affair comes off, so that I can order the wedding-cake.  Why, they are just all young people together.  It don’t mean anything.  They just naturally like each other’s society.  They are amusing themselves,—­that’s all; and quite right, too.”