e said. 'Do they still steal colours at
lunch-time?'

'Not steal. Attract is the word. Of course they do. I'm good--I only
attract ultramarine; but there are students who'd attract flake-white.'

'I've done it myself. You can't help it when the palettes are hung up.

Every colour is common property once it runs down,--even though you
do start it with a drop of oil. It teaches people not to waste their
tubes.'

'I should like to attract some of your colours, Dick. Perhaps I might
catch your success with them.'

'I mustn't say a bad word, but I should like to. What in the world,
which you've just missed a lovely chance of seeing, does success or want
of success, or a three-storied success, matter compared with---- No, I
won't open that question again. It's time to go back to town.'

'I'm sorry, Dick, but----'

'You're much more interested in that than you are in me.'

'I don't know, I don't think I am.'

'What will you give me if I tell you a sure short-cut to everything you
want,--the trouble and the fuss and the tangle and all the rest? Will
you promise to obey me?'

'Of course.'

'In the first place, you must never forget a meal because you happen
to be at work. You forgot your lunch twice last week,' said Dick, at a
venture, for he knew with whom he was dealing.'

'No, no,--only once, really.'

'That's bad enough. And you mustn't take a cup of tea and a biscuit in
place of a regular dinner, because dinner happens to be a trouble.'

'You're making fun of me!'

'I never was more in earnest in my life. Oh, my love, my love, hasn't
it dawned on you yet what you are to me? Here's the whole earth in a
conspiracy to give you a chill, or run over you, or drench you to the
skin, or cheat you out of your money, or let you die of overwork and
underfeeding, and I haven't the mere right to look after you. Why, I
don't even know if you have sense enough to put on warm things when the
weather's cold.'

'Dick, you're the most awful boy to talk to--really! How do you suppose
I managed when you were away?'

'I wasn't here, and I didn't know. But now I'm back I'd give everything
I have for the right of telling you to come in out of the rain.'

'Your success too?'

This time it cost Dick a severe struggle to refrain from bad words.

'As Mrs. Jennett used to say, you're a trial, Maisie! You've been cooped
up in the schools too long, and you think every one is looking at you.

There aren't twelve hundred people i