“Oh, I think he’s just as lovely as he can live!” said Mela, as she stood a moment with her sister on the scene of her triumph, where the others had left them after the departure of their guests.

“Who?” asked Christine, deeply.  As she glanced down at her ring, her eyes burned with a softened fire.

She had allowed Beaton to change it himself from the finger where she had worn it to the finger on which he said she ought to wear it.  She did not know whether it was right to let him, but she was glad she had done it.

“Who?  Mr. Fulkerson, goosie-poosie!  Not that old stuckup Mr. Beaton of yours!”

“He is proud,” assented Christine, with a throb of exultation.

Beaton and Fulkerson went to the Elevated station with the Marches; but the painter said he was going to walk home, and Fulkerson let him go alone.

“One way is enough for me,” he explained.  “When I walk up, I don’t walk down.  Bye-bye, my son!” He began talking about Beaton to the Marches as they climbed the station stairs together.  “That fellow puzzles me.  I don’t know anybody that I have such a desire to kick, and at the same time that I want to flatter up so much.  Affect you that way?” he asked of March.

“Well, as far as the kicking goes, yes.”

“And how is it with you, Mrs. March?”

“Oh, I want to flatter him up.”

“No; really?  Why?  Hold on!  I’ve got the change.”

Fulkerson pushed March away from the ticket-office window; and made them his guests, with the inexorable American hospitality, for the ride down-town.  “Three!” he said to the ticket-seller; and, when he had walked them before him out on the platform and dropped his tickets into the urn, he persisted in his inquiry, “Why?”

“Why, because you always want to flatter conceited people, don’t you?” Mrs. March answered, with a laugh.

“Do you?  Yes, I guess you do.  You think Beaton is conceited?”

“Well, slightly, Mr. Fulkerson.”

“I guess you’re partly right,” said Fulkerson, with a sigh, so unaccountable in its connection that they all laughed.

“An ideal ’busted’?” March suggested.

“No, not that, exactly,” said Fulkerson.  “But I had a notion maybe Beaton wasn’t conceited all the time.”

“Oh!” Mrs. March exulted, “nobody could be so conceited all the time as Mr. Beaton is most of the time.  He must have moments of the direst modesty, when he’d be quite flattery-proof.”

“Yes, that’s what I mean.  I guess that’s what makes me want to kick him.  He’s left compliments on my hands that no decent man would.”

“Oh! that’s tragical,” said March.

“Mr. Fulkerson,” Mrs. March began, with change of subject in her voice, “who is Mrs. Mandel?”

“Who?  What do you think of her?” he rejoined.  “I’ll tell you about her when we get in the cars.  Look at that thing!  Ain’t it beautiful?”