t." She rose and took her cloak over her arm, as if to go to her own
room. But on the way to the door she stopped, and stood leaning against
the foot of the bed, contemplating a threadbare rug at her feet.
"Mother, you've told me a thousand times that it doesn't really matter
whom a girl marries."

"No, no!" Mrs. Vertrees protested. "I never said such a--"

"No, not in words; I mean what you MEANT. It's true, isn't it, that
marriage really is 'not a bed of roses, but a field of battle'? To get
right down to it, a girl could fight it out with anybody, couldn't she?
One man as well as another?"

"Oh, my dear! I'm sure your father and I--"

"Yes, yes," said Mary, indulgently. "I don't mean you and papa. But
isn't it propinquity that makes marriages? So many people say so, there
must be something in it."

"Mary, I can't bear for you to talk like that." And Mrs. Vertrees
lifted pleading eyes to her daughter--eyes that begged to be spared. "It
sounds--almost reckless!"

Mary caught the appeal, came to her, and kissed her gaily. "Never fret,
dear! I'm not likely to do anything I don't want to do--I've always been
too thorough-going a little pig! And if it IS propinquity that does our
choosing for us, well, at least no girl in the world could ask for more
than THAT! How could there be any more propinquity than the very house
next door?"

She gave her mother a final kiss and went gaily all the way to the door
this time, pausing for her postscript with her hand on the knob. "Oh,
the one that caught me looking in the window, mamma, the youngest one--"

"Did he speak of it?" Mrs. Vertrees asked, apprehensively.

"No. He didn't speak at all, that I saw, to any one. I didn't meet him.
But he isn't insane, I'm sure; or if he is, he has long intervals when
he's not. Mr. James Sheridan mentioned that he lived at home when he was
'well enough'; and it may be he's only an invalid. He looks dreadfully
ill, but he has pleasant eyes, and it struck me that if--if one were
in the Sheridan family"--she laughed a little ruefully--"he might be
interesting to talk to sometimes, when there was too much stocks and
bonds. I didn't see him after dinner."

"There must be something wrong with him," said Mrs. Vertrees. "They'd
have introduced him if there wasn't."

"I don't know. He's been ill so much and away so much--sometimes people
like that just don't seem to 'count' in a family. His father spoke of
sending him back to a machine-shop or