mirrors to wash and brush up and
adjust his necktie.

The cars stopping, he went to the front platform, where the dyspeptic,
who was leaving the train, turned to thank him "for all his kindness"
with such genuine gratitude that in the haste he quite lost his tongue,
and for his only response pushed her anxiously off the steps. He still
knew enough, however, to reflect that this probably left Miss Garnet
alone, and promptly going in he found her--sitting with the Fairs.

Because she was perishing to have Mr. March again begin where he had
left off, she conversed with the Fairs longer than ever and created half
a dozen delays out of pure nothings. So that when she and John were once
more alone together he talked hither and yon for a short while before he
asked her where the poems were.

Nevertheless she was extremely pleasant. Their fellow-passenger just
gone, she said, had praised him without stint, and had quoted him as
having said to her, "It isn't always right to do what we have the right
to do."

"O pshaw!" warmly exclaimed John, started as if she had touched an
inflamed nerve, and reddened, remembering how well Miss Garnet might
know what that nerve was, and why it was so sore.

"I wish I knew how to be sen-ten-tious," said Barbara, obliviously.

"It was she led up to it." He laughed. "She said it better, herself,
afterward!"

"How did she say it?"

"She? O she said--she said her pastor said it--that nothing's quite
right until it's noble."

"Well, don't you believe that principle?"

"I don't know! That's what I've asked myself twenty times to-day."

"Why to-day?" asked Miss Garnet, with eyes downcast, as though she could
give the right answer herself.

"O"--he smiled--"something set me to thinking about it. But, now, Miss
Garnet, is it true? Isn't it sometimes allowable, and sometimes even
necessary--absolutely, morally necessary--for a fellow to do what may
look anything but noble?"

He got no reply.

"O of course I know it's the spirit of an act that counts, and not its
look; but--here now, for example,"--John dropped his voice
confidentially--"is a fellow in love with a young lady, and----Do I
speak loud enough?"

"Yes, go on."

He did so for some time. By and by:

"Ah! yes, Mr. March, but remember you're only supposing a case."

"O, but I'm not only supposing it; it's actual fact. I knew it. And, as
I say, whatever that feeling for her was, it became the ruling passion
of his life. When