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“Why not?” said Patty, who was hardly yet without fear lest something should mar the expedition.

“What will three gentlemen do with four ladies?”

“Oh, I forgot,” said Patty innocently.

“I’m sure I don’t care,” said Kate; “you may have Harry if you like.”

“Thank you for nothing,” said Miss Holmes. “I want one for myself. It’s all very well for you to make the offer, but what should I do if Harry wouldn’t have me? There are two sides, you know, to every bargain.”

“I’m sure he isn’t anything to me,” said Kate. “Why, he’s not quite seventeen years old yet!”

“Poor boy! What a shame to dispose of him so soon. We’ll let him off for a year or two; won’t we, Miss Coverdale? But as there seems by acknowledgment to be one beau with unappropriated services–“

“I’m sure I have appropriated nobody,” said Patty, “and didn’t intend.”

“Godfrey, then, is the only knight whose services are claimed,” said Miss Holmes, looking at Bessy. Bessy made no immediate answer with either her eyes or tongue; but when the Coverdales were gone, she took her new friend to task.

“How can you fill those young girls’ heads with such nonsense?”

“Nature has done that, my dear.”

“But nature should be trained; should it not? You will make them think that those foolish boys are in love with them.”

“The foolish boys, as you call them, will look after that themselves. It seems to me that the foolish boys know what they are about better than some of their elders.” And then, after a moment’s pause, she added, “As for my brother, I have no patience with him.”

“Pray do not discuss your brother,” said Bessy. “And, Bella, unless you wish to drive me away, pray do not speak of him and me together as you did just now.”

“Are you so bad as that,–that the slightest commonplace joke upsets you? Would not his services be due to you as a matter of course? If you are so sore about it, you will betray your own secret.”

“I have no secret,–none at least from you, or from mamma; and, indeed, none from him. We were both very foolish, thinking that we knew each other and our own hearts, when we knew neither.”

“I hate to hear people talk of knowing their hearts. My idea is, that if you like a young man, and he asks you to marry him, you ought to have him. That is, if there is enough to live on. I don’t know what more is wanted. But girls are getting to talk and think as though they were to send their hearts through some fiery furnace of trial before they may give them up to a husband’s keeping. I am not at all sure that the French fashion is not the best, and that these things shouldn’t be managed by the fathers and mothers, or perhaps by the family lawyers. Girls who are so intent upon knowing their own hearts generally end by knowing nobody’s heart but their own; and then they die old maids.”

“Better that than give themselves to the keeping of those they don’t know and cannot esteem.”

“That’s a matter of taste. I mean to take the first that comes, so long as he looks like a gentleman, and has not less than eight hundred a year. Now Godfrey does look like a gentleman, and has double that. If I had such a chance I shouldn’t think twice about it.”

“But I have no such chance.”

“That’s the way the wind blows; is it?”

“No, no. Oh, Bella, pray, pray leave me alone. Pray do not interfere. There is no wind blowing in any way. All that I want is your silence and your sympathy.”

“Very well. I will be silent and sympathetic as the grave. Only don’t imagine that I am cold as the grave also. I don’t exactly appreciate your ideas; but if I can do no good, I will at any rate endeavour to do no harm.”