are charming girls, and I don't suppose would have
looked at me. At the same time, I did not feel it possible to imagine
myself in love with any of them. That's quite a long time since," he
added with a laugh.

"Then there have been others since then? Let us put him in the
confessional, mother," cried Elinor with a laugh. "He ought not to have
any secrets of that description from you and me."

"Oh, yes, there have been others since," said John. "To tell the truth,
I have walked round a great many nice girls asking myself whether I
shouldn't find it very delightful to have one of them belonging to me. I
wasn't worthy the least attractive of them all, I quite knew; but still
I am about the same as other men. However, as I've said, I never
mentioned the matter to any of them."

"Never?" cried Mrs. Dennistoun, feeling a hesitation in his tone.

He laughed a little, shamefaced: "Well, if you like, I will say hardly
ever," he said. "There was one that might, perhaps, have taken pity upon
me--but fortunately an old lover of hers, who was much more
enterprising, turned up before anything decisive had been said."

"Fortunately, John?"

"Well, yes, I thought so. You see I am not a marrying man. I tried to
screw myself up to the point, but it was altogether, I am afraid, as a
matter of principle. I thought it would be a good thing, perhaps, to
have a wife."

"That was a very cold-blooded idea. No wonder you--it never came to
anything. That is not the way to go about it," said Elinor with the
ringing laugh of a child.

And yet her way of going about it had been far from a success. How
curious that she did not remember that!

"Yes," he said, "I am quite aware that I did not go about it in the
right way, but then that was the only way in which it presented itself
to me; and when I had made up my mind at last that it was a failure, I
confess it was with a certain sense of relief. I suppose I was born to
live and die an old bachelor."

"Do not be so sure of that," said Elinor. "Some day or other, in the
most unlooked-for moment, the fairy princess will bound upon the scene,
and the old bachelor will be lost."

"We'll wait quite contentedly for that day--which I don't believe in,"
he said.

Mrs. Dennistoun did not take any part in the later portion of this
discussion; her smile was feeble at the places where Elinor laughed. She
said seriously after this fireside conference, when he got up to prepare
for dinner, putting