Dan laughed with delight.  “Yes, I think I can, mother.  All I ask is the chance.”

“Oh, you’re very much in love, both of you; there’s no doubt about that.  What I mean is that she’s very high strung, very intense.  She has ideals—­any one can see that.”

Dan took it all for praise.  “Yes,” he said eagerly, “that’s what I told you.  And that will be the best thing about it for me.  I have no ideals.”

“Well, you must find out what hers are, and live up to them.”

“Oh, there won’t be any trouble about that,” said Dan buoyantly.

“You must help her to find them out too.”  He looked puzzled.  “You mustn’t expect the child to be too definite at first, nor to be always right, even when she’s full of ideals.  You must be very patient with her, Dan.”

“Oh, I will, mother!  You know that.  How could I ever be impatient with Alice?”

“Very forbearing, and very kind, and indefatigably forgiving.  Ask your father how to behave.”

Dan promised to do so, with a laugh at the joke.  It had never occurred to him that his father was particularly exemplary in these things, or that his mother idolised him for what seemed to Dan simply a matter-of-course endurance of her sick whims and freaks and moods.  He broke forth into a vehement protest of his good intentions, to which his mother did not seem very attentive.  After a while she asked—­

“Is she always so silent, Dan?”

“Well, not with me, mother.  Of course she was a little embarrassed; she didn’t know exactly what to say, I suppose—­”

“Oh, I rather liked that.  At least she isn’t a rattle-pate.  And we shall get acquainted; we shall like each other.  She will understand me when you bring her home here to live with us, and—­”

“Yes,” said Dan, rising rather hastily, and stooping over to his mother.  “I’m not going to let you talk any more now, or we shall have to suffer for it to-morrow night.”

He got gaily away before his mother could amplify a suggestion which spoiled a little of his pleasure in the praises—­he thought they were unqualified and enthusiastic praises—­she had been heaping upon Alice.  He wished to go to bed with them all sweet and unalloyed in his thought, to sleep, to dream upon his perfect triumph.

Mrs. Pasmer was a long time in undressing, and in calming down after the demands which the different events of the evening had made upon her resources.

“It has certainly been a very mixed evening, Alice,” she said, as she took the pins out of her back hair and let it fall; and she continued to talk as she went back and forth between their rooms.  “What do you think of banjo-playing for young ladies?  Isn’t it rather rowdy?  Decidedly rowdy, I think.  And Dan’s Yankee story!  I expected to see the old gentleman get up and perform some trick.”

“I suppose they do it to amuse Mrs. Mavering,” said Alice, with cold displeasure.