Dryfoos--"

"Oh, do say Sculpture and Architecture, mamma! It's getting so
dreadfully personal!"

"Alma, you know that I only wish to get at your real feeling in the
matter."

"And you know that I don't want to let you--especially when I haven't
got any real feeling in the matter. But I should think--speaking in the
abstract entirely--that if either of those arts was ever going to be in
earnest about him, it would want his exclusive devotion for a week at
least."

"I didn't know," said Mrs. Leighton, "that he was doing anything now at
the others. I thought he was entirely taken up with his work on 'Every
Other Week.'"

"Oh, he is! he is!"

"And you certainly can't say, my dear, that he hasn't been very
kind--very useful to you, in that matter."

"And so I ought to have said yes out of gratitude? Thank you, mamma! I
didn't know you held me so cheap."

"You know whether I hold you cheap or not, Alma. I don't want you to
cheapen yourself. I don't want you to trifle with any one. I want you to
be honest with yourself."

"Well, come now, mamma! Suppose you begin. I've been perfectly honest
with myself, and I've been honest with Mr. Beaton. I don't care for
him, and I've told him I didn't; so he may be supposed to know it. If he
comes here after this, he'll come as a plain, unostentatious friend
of the family, and it's for you to say whether he shall come in that
capacity or not. I hope you won't trifle with him, and let him get the
notion that he's coming on any other basis."

Mrs. Leighton felt the comfort of the critical attitude far too keenly
to abandon it for anything constructive. She only said, "You know very
well, Alma, that's a matter I can have nothing to do with."

"Then you leave him entirely to me?"

"I hope you will regard his right to candid and open treatment."

"He's had nothing but the most open and candid treatment from me, mamma.
It's you that wants to play fast and loose with him. And, to tell you
the truth, I believe he would like that a good deal better; I believe
that, if there's anything he hates, it's openness and candor." Alma
laughed, and put her arms round her mother, who could not help laughing
a little, too.

II.

The winter did not renew for Christine and Mela the social opportunity
which the spring had offered. After the musicale at Mrs. Horn's, they
both made their party-call, as Mela said, in due season; but they did
not find Mrs. Horn at home, and neither she nor