een found;
but manly traits are not to be picked up; they come of inheritance.
Well, I must go. I will speak to Brooks and see if anything can be
done."

Rain began to fall. How full of restful meditation was this
dripping-time, how brooding with half-formed, languorous thoughts that
begin as an idea and end as a reverie. Sometimes a soothing spirit
which the sun could not evoke from its boundless fields of light comes
out of the dark bosom of a cloud. A bright day promises so much, so
builds our hopes, that our keenest disappointments seem to come on a
radiant morning, but on a dismal day, when nothing has been promised,
a straggling pleasure is accidentally found and is pressed the closer
to the senses because it was so unexpected.

To Henry came the conviction that he was doing his duty, and yet he
could not at times subdue the feeling that pleasant environment was
the advocate that had urged this decision. But he refused to argue
with himself. Sometimes he strode after Mrs. Witherspoon as she went
about the house, and he knew that she was happy because be followed
her; and up and down the hall he romped with Ellen. They termed it a
frolic that they should have enjoyed years ago, and they laughingly
said that from the past they would snatch their separated childhood
and blend it now. It was a back-number pleasure, they agreed, but
that, like an old print, it held a charm in its quaintness. She
brought out a doll that had for years been asleep in a little blue
trunk. "Her name is Rose," she said, and with a broad ribbon she
deftly made a cap and put it on the doll's head. After a while Rose
was put to sleep again--the bright little mummy of a child's
affection, Henry called her--and the playmates became older. She told
him of the many suitors that had sought to woo her; of rich men; of
poor young fellows who strove to keep time to the quick-changing tune
of fashion; of moon-impressed youths who measured their impatient
yearning.

"And when are you going to let one of them take you away?" Henry
asked. Holding his hand, she had led him in front of a mirror.

"Oh, not at all," she answered, smiling at herself and then at him. "I
haven't fallen in love with anybody yet."

"And is that necessary?"

"Why, you know it is, goose. I'd be a pretty-looking thing to marry a
man I didn't love, wouldn't I?"

"You are a pretty thing anyway."

"Oh, do you really think so?"

"I know it."

"You are making fun of me. If y