t's done
continually."

_Miss Ramsey_: "It seems to me as if I had read something of the
kind."

_Miss Garnett_: "Oh yes, the books are full of it. Are those mallows?
They might carry off the effects of the chocolates." Miss Ramsey
passes her the box of marshmallows which she has bent over the table
to look at.

_Miss Ramsey_: "And of course they couldn't get into the books if they
hadn't really happened. I wish I could think of a case in point."

_Miss Garnett_: "Why, there was Peg Woffington--"

_Miss Ramsey_, with displeasure: "She was an actress of some sort,
wasn't she?"

_Miss Garnett_, with meritorious candor: "Yes, she was. But she was a
very _good_ actress."

_Miss Ramsey_: "What did _she_ do?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Well, it's a long time since I read it; and it's
rather old-fashioned now. But there was a countryman of some sort, I
remember, who came away from his wife, and fell in love with Peg
Woffington, and then the wife follows him up to London, and begs her
to give him back to her, and she does it. There's something about a
portrait of Peg--I don't remember exactly; she puts her face through
and cries when the wife talks to the picture. The wife thinks it is a
real picture, and she is kind of soliloquizing, and asking Peg to give
her husband back to her; and Peg does, in the end. That part is
beautiful. They become the greatest friends."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Rather silly, I should say."

_Miss Garnett_: "Yes, it _is_ rather silly, but I suppose the author
thought she had to do something."

_Miss Ramsey_: "And disgusting. A married man, that way! I don't see
any comparison with Mr. Ashley."

_Miss Garnett_: "No, there really isn't any. Emily has never asked you
to give him up. And besides, Peg Woffington really liked him a
little--loved him, in fact."

_Miss Ramsey_: "And I _don't_ like Mr. Ashley at all. Of course I
respect him--and I admire his intellect; there's no question about his
being handsome; but I have never thought of him for a moment in any
other way; and now I can't even respect him."

_Miss Garnett_: "Nobody could. I'm sure Emily would be welcome to him
as far as _I_ was concerned. But he has never been about with me so
much as he has with you, and I don't wonder you feel indignant."

_Miss Ramsey_, coldly: "I don't feel indignant. I wish to be just."

_Miss Garnett_: "Yes, that is what I mean. And poor Emily is so
uninteresting! In the play that Kentucky Summers does, she is