We were doubtful as to these happy results. We could all admire Willie Williams for standing up so gallantly for his wife, but we did not like her any the better for being so successfully stood up for, and we felt that we could never forget the unpleasant sensation he had given us. It took a long course of seeing him in his old shape and presentment among us--working in the same flamboyant clothes, at paintings as execrable as ever; with the same lisp, and the same trip and jerk, and the same easy good nature, and trifling enthusiasms--to forget that he had ever inspired us with actual fear, and might again, though he never has. We came also, in course of time, to like Loulou better, though it was rather galling to see how little she heeded the matter that cost us all so much remorse; but she lost her reserve in great measure as her children grew healthier and more like other people's. I think the hatchet was fairly buried for good and all when, in another year, she had another baby, a splendid boy weighing nine pounds and three quarters, at whose birth more enthusiasm was manifested in Babyland than on any similar occasion before, and who was loaded with the most beautiful presents, one in particular from Minnie Mason, who was much better, for her recovery of health dates from that sudden incursion into our Tolstoi Club, and the shock it gave her. I should have said as to that, that after the men had left us Blanche Livermore exclaimed, "Well, girls, I think we are pretty sufficiently crushed!" This was generous of Blanche, when she was the only one among us who had ever expressed any incredulity as to the "Russian novel," as we called it. "The fact is," she went on, "I have come to the conclusion that we have not yet advanced to the realistic period here; we are living in the realms of the ideal; and, what is worse, I fear I am so benighted that I like it best; don't you?" And, encouraged by an inarticulate but affirmatory murmur from all of us, she proceeded: "Let us all agree to settle down contentedly behind the age in our provinciality; and, that we may keep so, let us cut the realists in fiction, and take up something they don't approve of. I vote that we devote the rest of the season to a good thorough course of Walter Scott!" And so we did. [Illustration] [Illustration] A LITTLE FOOL "What, my dear Marian! And do you really and truly mean to say you thought of taking the girl without going to ask her character!" "There are so many difficulties about it. You see, she lived last with Mrs. Donald Craighead for two years, and that would be quite enough for a character. They all went abroad in a great hurry on account of Mr. Craighead's health, and Mrs. Craighead promised to give her one, but forgot it, and she couldn't bear to bother them when they were all in such trouble. I know myself that all that about them is true."