“So as to feel that you’ve been of some use in the world?” he said, dropping contentedly on the ground near her, and watching her industry.

“Do you think that would be very wrong?” she asked.  “What made that friend of yours—­Mr. Boardman—­go into journalism?”

“Oh, virtuous poverty.  You’re not thinking of becoming a newspaper woman, Miss Pasmer!”

“Why not?” She put the final cluster into the bunch in hand, and began to wind a withe of sweet-grass around the stems.  He dropped forward on his knees to help her, and together they managed the knot.  They were both flushed a little when it was tied, and were serious.

“Why shouldn’t one be a newspaper woman, if Harvard graduates are to be journalists?”

“Well, you know, only a certain kind are.”

“What kind?”

“Well, not exactly what you’d call the gentlemanly sort.”

“I thought Mr. Boardman was a great friend of yours?”

“He is.  He is one of the best fellows in the world.  But you must have seen that he wasn’t a swell.”

“I should think he’d be glad he was doing something at once.  If I were a—­” She stopped, and they laughed together.  “I mean that I should hate to be so long getting ready to do something as men are.”

“Then you’d rather begin making wall-paper at once than studying law?”

“Oh, I don’t say that.  I’m not competent to advise.  But I should like to feel that I was doing something.  I suppose it’s hereditary.”  Mavering stared a little.  “One of my father’s sisters has gone into a sisterhood.  She’s in England.”

“Is she a—­Catholic?” asked Mavering.

“She isn’t a Roman Catholic.”

“Oh yes!” He dropped forward on his knees again to help her tie the bunch she had finished.  It was not so easy as the first.

“Oh, thank you!” she said, with unnecessary fervour.

“But you shouldn’t like to go into a sisterhood, I suppose?” said Mavering, ready to laugh.

“Oh, I don’t know.  Why not?” She looked at him with a flying glance, and dropped her eyes.

“Oh, no reason, if you have a fancy for that kind of thing.”

“That kind of thing?” repeated Alice severely.

“Oh, I don’t mean anything disrespectful to it,” said Mavering, throwing his anxiety off in the laugh he had been holding back.  “And I beg your pardon.  But I don’t suppose you’re in earnest.”

“Oh no, I’m not in earnest,” said the girl, letting her wrists fall upon her knees, and the clusters drop from her hands.  “I’m not in earnest about anything; that’s the truth—­that’s the shame.  Wouldn’t you like,” she broke off, “to be a priest, and go round among these people up here on their frozen islands in the winter?”

“No,” shouted Mavering, “I certainly shouldn’t.  I don’t see how anybody stands it.  Ponkwasset Falls is bad enough in the winter, and compared to this region Ponkwasset Falls is a metropolis.  I believe in getting all the good you can out of the world you were born in—­of course without hurting anybody else.”  He stretched his legs out on the bed of sweet-fern, where he had thrown himself, and rested his head on his hand lifted on his elbow.  “I think this is what this place is fit for—­a picnic; and I wish every one well out of it for nine months of the year.”