'but can't you find one of
yourself, not even an old one?'

'I think I can give you one after all,' said Mabel; 'wait a minute.'
And as she came back after a minute's absence she said, 'Here's one I
had promised to Gilda Featherstone, but Gilda can wait and you can't.
I'll give you an envelope to put them all in, and then we will talk.
Tell me first how long you are going to be away?'

'No longer than I can help,' said Vincent, 'but it depends on so many
things.'

'But you will write to us, won't you?'

'Will you answer if I do?'

'Of course,' said Mabel. 'Don't you remember when I was a little girl,
and used to write to you at school, and at Trinity too? I was always a
better correspondent than you were, Vincent.'

Just then Dolly came, holding a cage of lovebirds. 'Champion said you
were here,' she began. 'Vincent, wait till I put Jachin and Boaz down.
Now you can kiss me. I knew you wouldn't go away without saying
good-bye to me. You haven't seen my birds, have you? Papa gave them to
me. They're such chilly birds, I've brought them in here to get warm.'

'They're very much alike,' said Vincent, looking into the cage, upon
which each bird instantly tried to hide its head in the sand
underneath the other.

'They're exactly the same,' said Dolly, 'so I never know which is
Jachin and which is Boaz; but they don't know their own names, and if
they did they wouldn't answer to them, so it doesn't matter so very
much after all, _does_ it?'

As it never occurred to Dolly that anybody could have the bad taste to
prefer any one else's conversation to her own, she took entire
possession of Vincent, throwing herself into the couch nearest to him,
and pouring out her views on lovebirds generally to his absent ear.

'They don't know me yet,' she concluded, 'but then I've only had them
six months. Do you know, Harold Caffyn says they're little humbugs,
and kiss one another only when people look at them. I _have_ caught
them fighting dreadfully myself. I don't think lovebirds ought to
fight. Do you? Oh, and Harold says that when one dies I ought to time
the other and see how long it takes him to pine away; but Harold is
always saying horrid things like that.'

'Dolly dear,' cried the governess from the inner room, 'will you run
and ask Colin if he has taken away the metronome to the schoolroom?'

Dolly danced out to hunt for that prosaic instrument in a desultory
way, and then forget it in some dispute with Colin, who