He was roused from his meditations by a short, staccato bark at his heels, and found the round retriever pup staggering up to him. Toby had an inability to walk straight; he rolled along like a drunken man with a jovial boisterousness. He had a large wire muzzle on, and the tip of his pink tongue hung through it. “Oh, are you looking at the water?” said Jeannie, sympathetically. “That’s so nice of you. I have to look at running water every day. It clears one’s brain out, I think. Toby is shortly to have his bath.” “It is a shame making him wear a muzzle while he has still his milk-teeth,” said Jack. “It isn’t a muzzle,” said Jeannie, “it is his hat. Toby is rather proud of it. But don’t you agree with me about water?” “Yes; I was having a wash myself. I have had rather an agitating talk.” Jeannie knew that he had been to see his mother, and did not see her way to any reply. She supposed that the picture was at the bottom of it. “It was about a friend of mine,” continued Jack, “who got into great trouble. We disagreed hopelessly, my mother and I. It is a bore. Oh, I want washing!” he cried, and turned to look at the water again. Jeannie had a sort of fleeting idea that she had only seen this young man for the first time that morning, and that convention would call confidences premature. But convention meant little to her; she did not wilfully neglect it, but she simply forgot its existence. “Oh, but we must expect to disagree with people,” she said. “Think how extraordinarily tame the world would be if we didn’t! We should spend our whole lives in admiring the views of other people which tallied so exactly with our own.” “But do you like disagreeing with people who are very near you?” he asked. Jeannie considered a moment. “I don’t suppose I have agreed with Aunt Em about anything for five years,” she said. Jack laughed. “But you have not disagreed--not radically, I mean.” Jeannie turned half round and looked at him. But before she could reply there swept by Colonel Raymond, followed by a string of straggling children, returning from their “good, brisk walk.” He saw her, stared, stared also at her companion, and passed on. “Oh, dear me,” thought Jeannie, “Arthur has evidently seen him. That was one of the most complete cuts I ever received.” She paused a moment to bring her thoughts back to the point from which they had strayed. “No, you are right; not radically,” she said. “And if your disagreement has been radical, and it is not impertinent of me, do let me offer you my sympathy. It is rather a common word, but sincerity makes common things real.”