to the station when I was leaving for what proved my
last term at Cambridge, seems to me to throw some light. I had but
recently learned of Lucy's engagement to marry Doctor Woodthrop, of
Davenham Minster, our nearest market-town. I had found Woodthrop a
decent fellow enough, but thirty-four as against Lucy's twenty-one,
inclining ominously to corpulence, and as flatly prosaic and
unadventurous a spirit as a small country town could produce. Now, as
Lucy seemed to me to have hankerings in the direction of social
pleasures and the like, with a penchant for brilliancy and daring, I was
a little puzzled about her engagement, for Woodthrop was one who kept a
few conversational pleasantries on hand, as a man keeps old pipes on a
rack, for periodical use at suitable times.

"So you are actually going to be married, Loo?" I said.

"Oh, well, engaged, Dick," she replied, with a little blush.

"With a view, I presume. Then I suppose it follows that you are in
love--h'm?"

"Why, Dick, what a cross-examiner you are!" The blush increased.

"Well, my dear girl, surely it's a natural assumption, is it not?"

"Oh, I suppose so. But----"

"Yes?"

"Well, I don't think in real life it's the same thing that you read
about in novels, do you, Dick?"

"What? Being in love?"

"Yes."

"Well, perhaps not; but I imagine it ought to be something pretty
pronounced, you know, even in such a pale reflection of the novels as
real life. I gather that it ought to be; seriously, Loo, I think it
ought to be. I suppose you do love Woodthrop, don't you?"

My sister looked a little distressed, and I half-regretted having put so
direct a question. I was sufficiently the product of my day to be
terribly afraid of any kind of interference with my fellow creatures.
Our apotheosis of individual liberty had made any such action anathema,
"bad form," a sin more resented in the sinner than cowardice or
dishonesty, or than any kind of wickedness which was strictly personal
and, as you might say, self-contained. Our one object of universal
reverence and respect was the personal equation.

"There, Loo," I said, "I didn't mean to tease you." Thus, in accordance
with my traditions, I brushed aside and apologized for my natural
interest in her well-being in the same way that my poor father and his
like brushed away all matters of topical import, and the average man of
the period brushed aside all concern with his fellow men, all
responsibility for the c