“Certainly not,” said Margaret.  “There!” and she rested her right arm on the table, while Richard placed the hand in the desired position on a fresh napkin which he had folded for the purpose.

“Let your hand lie flexible, please.  Hold it naturally.  Why do you stiffen the fingers so?”

“I don’t; they stiffen themselves, Richard.  They know they are going to have their photograph taken, and can’t look natural.  Who ever does?”

After a minute the fingers relaxed, and settled of their own accord into an easy pose.  Richard laid his hand softly on her wrist.

“Don’t move now.”

“I’ll be as quiet as a mouse,” said Margaret giving a sudden queer little glance at his face.

Richard emptied a paper of white powder into a great yellow bowl half filled with water and fell to stirring it vigorously, like a pastry-cook beating eggs.  When the plaster was of the proper consistency he began building it up around the hand, pouring on a spoonful at a time, here and there, carefully.  In a minute or two the inert white fingers were completely buried.  Margaret made a comical grimace.

“Is it cold?”

“Ice,” said Margaret, shutting her eyes involuntarily.

“If it is too disagreeable we can give it up,” suggested Richard.

“No, don’t touch it!” she cried, waving him back with her free arm.  “I don’t mind; but it’s as cold as so much snow.  How curious!  What does it?”

“I suppose a scientific fellow could explain the matter to you easily enough.  When the water evaporates a kind of congealing process sets in,—­a sort of atmospheric change, don’t you know?  The sudden precipitation of the—­the”—­

“You’re as good as Tyndall on Heat,” said Margaret demurely.

“Oh, Tyndall is well enough in his way,” returned Richard, “but of course he doesn’t go into things so deeply as I do.”

“The idea of telling me that ‘a congealing process set in,’ when I am nearly frozen to death!” cried Margaret, bowing her head over the imprisoned arm.

“Your unseemly levity, Margaret, makes it necessary for me to defer my remarks on natural phenomena until some more fitting occasion.”

“Oh, Richard, don’t let an atmospherical change come over you!"

“When you knocked at my door, months ago,” said Richard, “I didn’t dream you were such a satirical little piece, or may be you wouldn’t have got in.  You stood there as meek as Moses, with your frock reaching only to the tops of your boots.  You were a deception, Margaret.”

“I was dreadfully afraid of you, Richard.”

“You are not afraid of me nowadays.”

“Not a bit.”

“You are showing your true colors.  That long dress, too!  I believe the train has turned your head.”

“But just now you said you admired it.”

“So I did, and do.  It makes you look quite like a woman, though.”

“I want to be a woman.  I would like to be as old—­as old as Mrs. Methuselah.  Was there a Mrs. Methuselah?”