haven't we?" she said.

"Oh, not half," he said. "But if you're tired you must let me make up
some of the bunches."

"No, no! I want to do them all myself," she said, gesturing his offered
hands away, with a little nether appeal in her laughing refusal.

"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 you