“That is easily given,” said Farnham.  “A young woman, whose name I hardly know, came to me in the garden this morning to ask for help to get some lady-like work to do.  After discussing that subject threadbare, she came in here for a rose, and, apropos of nothing, made me a declaration and a proposal of honorable wedlock, dans toutes les formes.”

“The forms were evident as I entered,” said Mrs. Belding, dryly.

“I could not let her drop on the damp floor,” said Farnham, who was astonished to find himself positively blushing under the amused scrutiny of his mother-confessor.  “Consider, if you please, my dear madam, that this is the first offer I have ever received, and I was naturally somewhat awkward about declining it.  We shall learn better manners as we go along.”

“You did decline, then?” said Mrs. Belding, easily persuaded of the substantial truth of the story, and naturally inclined, as is the way of woman, to the man’s side.  Then, laughing at Arthur’s discomfiture, she added, “I was about to congratulate you.”

“I deserve only your commiseration.”

“I must look about and dispose of you in some way.  You are evidently too rich and too fascinating.  But I came over to-day to ask you what I ought to do about my Lake View farm.  I have two offers for it; if I had but one, I would take either—­well, you know what I mean;” and the conversation became practical.  After that matter was disposed of, she said, with a keen side-glance at Farnham, “That was a very pretty girl.  I hope you will not be exposed to such another attack; I might not be so near the next time.”

“That danger, thanks to you, is over; Mademoiselle will never return,” he answered, with an air of conviction.

Mrs. Belding went home with no impression left of the scene she had witnessed but one of amusement.  She thought of it only as “a good joke on Arthur Farnham.”  She kept chuckling to herself over it all day, and if she had had any especial gossip in the town, she would have put on her hat and hurried off to tell it.  But she was a woman who lived very much at home, and, in fact, cared little for tattling.  She was several times on the point of sharing the fun of it with her daughter, but was prevented by an instinctive feeling that it was hardly the sort of story to tell a young girl about a personal acquaintance.  So she restrained herself, though the solitary enjoyment of it irritated her.

They were sitting on the wide porch which ran around two sides of the house just as twilight was falling.  The air was full of drowsy calls and twitters from the grass and the trees.  The two ladies had been sitting ever since dinner, enjoying the warm air of the early summer, talking very little, and dropping often into long and contented silences.  Mrs. Belding had condescended to grenadine in consideration of the weather, and so looked less funereal than usual.  Alice was dressed in a soft and vapory fabric of creamy