“I don't know why it need be such a surprise to find one's gentlemen friends married, but it always is, somehow. I don't think Mr. Hubbard would have known me if I hadn't insisted upon his recognizing me; I can't blame him: it's three years since we met. Do you help him with his reports? I know you do! You _must_ make him lenient to our entertainment,--the cause is so good! How long have you been in Boston? Though I don't know why I should ask that,--you may have always been in Boston! One used to know everybody; but the place _is_ so large, now. I should like to come and see you; but I'm going out of town to-morrow, for the summer. I'm not really here, now, except _ex officio_; I ought to have been away weeks ago, but this Indigent Surf-Bathing has kept me. You've no idea what such an undertaking is. But you _must_ let me have your address, and as soon as I get back to town in the fall, I shall insist upon looking you up. _Good_ by! I must run away, now, and leave you; there are a thousand things for me to look after yet to-day.” She took Marcia again by the hand, and superadded some bows and nods and smiles of parting, after she released her, but she did not ask her to come into the committee-room and have some coffee; and Bartley took his wife's hand under his arm and went out of the hall. “Well,” he said, with a man's simple pleasure in Miss Kingsbury's friendliness to his wife, “that's the girl I used to tell you about,--the rich one with the money in her own right, whom I met at the Hallecks'. She seemed to think you were about the thing, Marsh! I saw her eyes open as she came up, and I felt awfully proud of you; you never looked half so well. But why didn't you _say_ something?” “She didn't give me any chance,” said Marcia, “and I had nothing to say, anyway. I thought she was very disagreeable.” “Disagreeable!” repeated Bartley in amaze.