“Very.  But Miss Anderson is more than that.  I was disposed to be critical of her at Campobello for a while, but she wore extremely well.  All at once you found yourself admiring her uncommon common-sense.

“Yes.  That’s just it,” cried Dan.  “She is so sensible!”

“I think she’s very pretty,” said Mrs. Brinkley.”

“Well, her nose,” suggested Dan.  “It seems a little capricious.”

“It’s a trifle bizarre, I suppose.  But what beautiful eyes!  And her figure!  I declare that girl’s carriage is something superb.”

“Yes, she has a magnificent walk.”

“Walks with her carriage,” mused Brinkley aloud.

His wife did not regard him.  “I don’t know what Miss Anderson’s principles are, but her practices are perfect.  I never knew her do an unkind or shabby thing.  She seems very good and very wise.  And that deep voice of hers has such a charm.  It’s so restful.  You feel as if you could repose upon it for a thousand years.  Well!  You will get down before we leave?”

“Yes, I will,” said Dan.  “I’m here after a man who’s after a patent, and as soon as I can finish up my business with him I believe I will run down to Fortress Monroe.”

“This eleven-o’clock train will get you there at six,” said Brinkley.  “Better telegraph for your rooms.”

“Or, let us know,” said Mrs. Brinkley, “and we’ll secure them for you.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Dan.

He went away, feeling that Mrs. Brinkley was the pleasantest woman he ever met.  He knew that she had talked Miss Anderson so fully in order to take away the implication of her husband’s joke, and he admired her tact.  He thought of this as he loitered along the street from Wormley’s to the Arlington, where he was going to find Miss Anderson, by an appointment of the night before, and take a walk with her; and thinking of tact made him think of Mrs. Pasmer.  Mrs. Pasmer was full of tact; and how kind she had always been to him!  She had really been like a mother to him; he was sure she had understood him; he believed she had defended him; with a futility of which he felt the pathos, he made her defend him now to Alice.  Alice was very hard and cold, as when he saw her last; her mother’s words fell upon her as upon a stone; even Mrs. Pasmer’s tears, which Dan made her shed, had no effect upon the haughty girl.  Not that he cared now.

The blizzard of the previous days had whirled away; the sunshine lay still, with a warm glisten and sparkle, on the asphalt which seemed to bask in it, and which it softened to the foot.  He loitered by the gate of the little park or plantation where the statue of General Jackson is riding a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, and looked over at the French-Italian classicism of the White House architecture with a pensive joy at finding pleasure in it, and then he went on to the Arlington.

Miss Anderson was waiting for him in the parlour, and they went a long walk up the avenues and across half the alphabet in the streets, and through the pretty squares and circles, where the statues were sometimes beautiful and always picturesque; and the sparrows made a vernal chirping in the naked trees and on the green grass.  In two or three they sat down on the iron benches and rested.