There was the little clay shepherd, to be sure, who was very well thought of by the community at large. The shepherdess liked him,--certainly she liked him,--and she sometimes spoke her thoughts to him, but she never could have loved him, had the drawing-room been the Desert of Sahara and he its only other inhabitant. She was always perfectly frank with him whenever he broached the subject. "In the first place, I do not believe that you are really in love," she said to him kindly; "you only think you are, because everybody else seems to be. Reflect a little, and I am sure you will agree with me,--for my part, I have given it a great deal of serious thought. The air seems full of thrills for all of you lately, but you should be very careful; a thrill is a dangerous prism through which to look at life." And to herself she said, "Poor little fellow! he thinks he can build a bonfire out of two straws." She could not associate love with his healthy plumpness. He was even-tempered, and had an occasional idea, but no theories; he wanted things without longing for them; his love was tender but not invariably delicate. She felt the fault to be in his head rather than in his heart; he always acquiesced, but seldom understood. On the table in the centre of the room was a Chinese mandarin, who was also in love with the little shepherdess, but she absolutely abhorred him. To her mind he was coarse and repulsive, in spite of his wealth. His jokes never amused her. Still he was a humorist, and had a way of wobbling his head and poking out his tongue that threw the whole drawing-room into convulsions of laughter. Poor little shepherdess! Well, she did what we all do under similar circumstances. She built herself a world of her own,--a little intellectual laboratory into which she dragged bits of careful observation to be submitted to the tests of her theories. So, poised like a sparrow on a twig, she continued to peer over the edge of the mantel-piece, where she saw quite enough to set her thinking.