l, she is nothing else. A most material type; why, her
waist must be twenty-two inches round!"

"Quite that, dear," with sweetness, from the owner of a nineteen-inch
article, which two maids struggled with daily in order to reduce it to
the required measurement.

"Well, I never could--between you and me--see much to admire in her."

"Neither could I, although, of course, it has been the fashion to rave
over her."

And, with that, these two amiable young women fell at it tooth and nail,
and proceeded to cry down their victim's personal appearance in the most
unmeasured and sweeping terms.

After the taking away of a fellow-woman's character, comes as a natural
sequence the condemnation of her face and figure, and it is doubtful
which indictment is the most grave in eyes feminine. Meanwhile the
object of all this animadversion sat tranquilly unconscious under her
tulip-tree, whilst Denis Wilde, that astute young gentleman, whom they
had declared to be too well aware of what he was about to be entrapped
into matrimony, was engaged in proposing to her for the fourth time.

"I thought we had settled this subject long ago, Mr. Wilde," says Vera,
tranquilly unfolding her large, black, feather fan--for it is hot--and
slowly folding it up again.

"It will never be settled for me, Vera; never, so long as you are
unmarried."

"What a dreadful mistake life is!" sighs Vera, wearily, more to herself
than to the boy at her feet. Was anybody ever happy in this world? she
began to wonder.

"I know very well," resumed Denis Wilde, "that I am not good enough for
you; but, then, who is? My prospects, such as they are, are very distant,
and your friends, I daresay, expect you to marry well."

"How often must I tell you that that has nothing to do with it," cries
Vera, impatiently. "If I loved a beggar, I should marry him."

Young Wilde plucked at the grass again, and chewed a daisy up almost
viciously. There was a supreme selfishness in the way she had of
perpetually harping upon her lack of love for him.

"There is always some fellow or other hanging about you," grumbles the
young man, irritably; "you are an inveterate flirt!"

"No woman is worthy of the name who is not!" retorts Vera, laughing.

"I _hate_ a flirt," angrily.

"This is very amusing when you know that your flirtation with Mrs.
Hazeldine is a chronic disease of two years' standing!"

"Pooh!--mere child's play on both sides, and you know it is! You are very