growing, multiplying and
reproducing its white buds and leaves and twining shoots. Pitt regarded
it with an unenlightened eye.

'I am as wise as I was before,' he said.

'Why, look here,' said the young lady, with a slight movement of her
little foot calling his attention to the edge of her skirt, where a
somewhat similar line of embroidery was visible. 'I am making a border
for another gown.'

Pitt's eye went from the one embroidery to the other; he said nothing.

'You are not complimentary,' said Miss Frere.

'I am not yet sure that there is anything to compliment.'

The young lady gave him a full view of her fine eyes for half a second,
or perhaps it was only that they took a good look at him.

'Don't you see,' she said, 'that it is economy, and thrift, and all the
household virtues? Not having the money to buy trimming, I am
manufacturing it.'

'And the gown must be trimmed?'

'Unquestionably! You would not like it so well if it were not.'

'That is possible. The question remains'--

'What question?'

'Whether Life is not worth more than a bit of trimming.'

'Life!' echoed the young lady a little scornfully. 'An hour now and
then is not Life.'

'It is the stuff of which Life is made.'

'What is Life good for?'

'That is precisely the weightiest question that can occupy the mind of
a philosopher!'

'Are you a philosopher, Mr. Dallas!'

'In so far as a philosopher means a lover of knowledge. A philosopher
who has attained unto knowledge, I am not;--that sort of knowledge.'

'You have been studying it?'

'I have been studying it for years.'

'What Life is good for?' said the young lady, with again a lift of her
eyes which expressed a little disdain and a little impatience. But she
saw Pitt's face with a thoughtful earnestness upon it; he was not
watching her eyes, as he ought to have been. Her somewhat petulant
words he answered simply.

'What question of more moment can there be? I am here, a human creature
with such and such powers and capacities; I am here for so many years,
not numerous; what is the best thing I can do with them and myself?'

'Get all the good out of them you can.'

'Certainly! but you observe that is no answer to my question of "how."'

'Good is pleasure, isn't it?'

'Is it?'

'I think so.'

'Make pleasure lasting, and perhaps I should agree with you. But how
can you do that?'

'You cannot do it, that ever I heard. It is not in the nature of
things.'

'Th