her
hands. She had, he inferred, many interests of her own, and did not
waste much conjecture on stray callers. Franklin was quite content to
count as a stray caller, and he had always conjecture enough for two in
any encounter. He talked away in his even, deliberate tones, while they
drank tea and ate the hottest of muffins that stood in a covered dish on
a brass tripod before the fire, and, while they talked, Miss Buchanan
shot rather sharper glances at him from under her eyebrows.

'So you were at Merriston with Helen's Miss Jakes,' she said, placing
him. 'It made a match, that party, didn't it? Quite a good thing for
Gerald Digby, too, I hear. Miss Jakes is soon to be back, Helen tells
me.'

'Next week,' said Franklin.

'And the wedding for November.'

'So I'm told.'

'You've known Miss Jakes for some time?'

'For almost all my life,' said Franklin, with his calm and candid smile.

'Oh, old friends, then. You come from Boston, too, perhaps?'

'Well, I come from the suburbs, in the first place, but I've been in the
hub itself for a long time now,' said Franklin. 'Yes, I'm a very old
friend of Miss Jakes's. I'm very much attached to her.'

'Ah, and are you pleased with the match?'

'It seems to please Althea, and that's the main thing. I think Mr. Digby
will make her happy; yes, I'm pleased.'

'Yes,' said Miss Buchanan meditatively. 'Yes, I suppose Gerald Digby
will make a pleasant husband. He's a pleasant creature. I've always
considered him very selfish, I confess; but women seem to fall in love
with selfish men.'

Franklin received this ambiguous assurance with a moment or so of
silence, and then remarked that marriage might make Mr. Digby less
selfish.

'You mean,' said Miss Buchanan, 'that she's selfish too, and won't let
him have it all his own way?'

Franklin did not mean that at all. 'Life with a high-minded,
true-hearted woman sometimes alters a man,' he commented.

'Oh, she's that, is she?' said Miss Buchanan. 'I've not met her yet, you
see. Well, I don't know that I've much expectation of seeing Gerald
Digby alter. But he's a pleasant creature, as I said, and I don't think
he's a man to make any woman unhappy. In any case your friend is
probably better off married to a pleasant, selfish man than not married
at all,' and Miss Buchanan smiled a tight, kindly smile. 'I don't like
this modern plan of not getting married. I want all the nice young women
I know to get married, and the sooner