L part!" cried Minnie, clasping her hands in rapture. "I've
always said what a perfect little apartment it was by itself."

"Well, don't say it again, then," returned her sister. "Always is often
enough. Well, in the L part Go on, mother! Don't ask where you were,
when it's so exciting."

"I don't care whether it's in the L part or not. There's plenty of room
in the great barn of a place everywhere."

"But what about his taking care of the business in Boston?" suggested
Eunice, looking at her father.

"There's no hurry about that."

"And about the excursion to aesthetic centres abroad?" Minnie added.

"That could be managed," said her father, with the same ironical smile.

The mother and the girls went on wildly planning Dan's future for him.
It was all in a strain of extravagant burlesque. But he could not take
his part in it with his usual zest. He laughed and joked too, but at the
bottom of his heart was an uneasy remembrance of the different future he
had talked over with Mrs. Pasmer so confidently. But he said to himself
buoyantly at last that it would come out all right. His mother would
give in, or else Alice could reconcile her mother to whatever seemed
really best.

He parted from his mother with fond gaiety. His sisters came out of the
room with him.

"I'm perfectly sore with laughing," said Minnie. "It seems like old
times--doesn't it, Dan?--such a gale with mother."

XXXI.

An engagement must always be a little incredible at first to the
families of the betrothed, and especially to the family of the young
man; in the girl's, the mother, at least, will have a more realising
sense of the situation. If there are elder sisters who have been
accustomed to regard their brother as very young, he will seem all the
younger because in such a matter he has treated himself as if he were
a man; and Eunice Mavering said, after seeing the Pasmers, "Well, Dan,
it's all well enough, I suppose, but it seems too ridiculous."

"What's ridiculous about it, I should like to know?" he demanded.

"Oh, I don't know. Who'll look after you when you're married? Oh, I
forgot Ma'am Pasmer!"

"I guess we shall be able to look after ourselves," said Dan; a little
sulkily.

"Yes, if you'll be allowed to," insinuated his sister.

They spoke at the end of a talk in which he had fretted at the reticence
of both his sister and his father concerning the Pasmers, whom they had
just been to see. He was vexed with his fat