"I don't know that he will be 'so much regretted.'" "Surely----Why, one fair lady has even been shedding tears!" "Oh, Miss Chubb? Yes; but that proves very little. The good soul is always overstocked with sentiment, and will use any friend as a waste-pipe to get rid of her superfluous emotion." "Well, I should have made no doubt that you would be sorry, Miss Bodkin." "Sorry! Yes; I am sorry. That is to say, I shall miss Algernon. He is so clever, and bright, and gay, and--different from all our Whitford mortals. But for himself, I think one ought to be glad. Papa says, and you say, and I say myself, that his journey to London on such slender encouragement is a wild-goose chase. But, after all, why not? Wild geese must be better to chase than tame ones." "Not so easy to catch, nor so well worth the catching, though," said Mr. Diamond, smiling. "I said nothing about catching. The hunting is the sport. If a good fat goose had been all that was wanted, Mr. Filthorpe, of Bristol, offered him that; and even, I believe, ready roasted. But--if I were a man, I think I would rather hunt down my wild goose for myself." "You had better not let Errington hear your theory about the pleasures of wild-goose hunting." "Because he is apt enough for the sport already?" "N--not precisely. But he would take advantage of your phrase to characterise any hunting which it suited him to undertake, and thus give an air of impulse and romance to, perhaps, a very prosaic ambition, very deliberately pursued." "I wonder why----," said Minnie, and then stopped suddenly. "Yes! You wonder why?" "No, I wonder no longer. I think I understand." "Miss Bodkin is pleased to be oracular," said Mr. Diamond, with a careless smile; and then he moved away towards the piano, where Mrs. Bodkin was playing a quaint sonata of Clementi, and stood listening with a composed, attentive face. Nevertheless, he felt some curiosity about the scope of Minnie's unfinished sentence.