's everything that
instruction and discipline can make of a woman; but I shouldn't think
they could make enough of her to be in love with."

"Well, I don't know. The academic has its charm. There are moods in which
I could imagine myself in love with an academic person. That regularity
of line; that reasoned strictness of contour; that neatness of pose; that
slightly conventional but harmonious grouping of the emotions and
morals--you can see how it would have its charm, the Wedgwood in human
nature? I wonder where Mrs. Mandel keeps her urn and her willow."

"I should think she might have use for them in that family, poor thing!"
said Mrs. March.

"Ah, that reminds me," said her husband, "that we had another talk with
the old gentleman, this afternoon, about Fulkerson's literary, artistic,
and advertising orgie, and it's postponed till October."

"The later the better, I should think," said Mrs: March, who did not
really think about it at all, but whom the date fixed for it caused to
think of the intervening time. "We have got to consider what we will do
about the summer, before long, Basil."

"Oh, not yet, not yet," he pleaded; with that man's willingness to abide
in the present, which is so trying to a woman. "It's only the end of
April."

"It will be the end of June before we know. And these people wanting the
Boston house another year complicates it. We can't spend the summer
there, as we planned."

"They oughtn't to have offered us an increased rent; they have taken an
advantage of us."

"I don't know that it matters," said Mrs. March. "I had decided not to go
there."

"Had you? This is a surprise."

"Everything is a surprise to you, Basil, when it happens."

"True; I keep the world fresh, that way."

"It wouldn't have been any change to go from one city to another for the
summer. We might as well have stayed in New York."

"Yes, I wish we had stayed," said March, idly humoring a conception of
the accomplished fact. "Mrs. Green would have let us have the gimcrackery
very cheap for the summer months; and we could have made all sorts of
nice little excursions and trips off and been twice as well as if we had
spent the summer away."

"Nonsense! You know we couldn't spend the summer in New York."

"I know I could."

"What stuff! You couldn't manage."

"Oh yes, I could. I could take my meals at Fulkerson's widow's; or at
Maroni's, with poor old Lindau: he's got to dining there again. Or, I
could k