"I am afraid it is," he answered, as he stopped to make a bow, across a thousand cobblestones, to my sister, who was descending from the sky no doubt to attend to her milk-pans, and to know of nothing else; "I am afraid it is, with those who have not got it; and there is a great deal to be said for them. But I should be ashamed if it were so, with those who have obtained it. Moreover, it would be contrary to human nature, for does any man value a thing that is his own? As long as it seems beyond his reach, it is all that is lovely and charming; but the moment he has reduced the _chose in action_, as the lawyers express it, into possession, all its glory is gone, till he loses it again." "Very well. There is your _chose in action_ over there." I pointed to the dairy window. "I shall take care to tell her how you mean to estimate her, if ever she becomes your property." "For Heaven's sake," he cried, while he caught me by the sleeve, as if I were going straightway to denounce him, "don't suppose that such impious doctrines apply to--to the one exception of all human laws." "I am afraid that they do, and ever so much quicker than they apply to money. But once more, when are you going to try your luck?" For he had pestered me perpetually about his feelings now, and I had advised him not to be in too much of a hurry. I felt that he was further on than I was, in acquaintance with the lovely object; for he must have had about thirty opportunities, to my three, counting dog-dialogues and everything. But he had not done half so much as I had; and women are wise enough to take one deed deeper to the dear heart, than a hundred thousand words. In fact, it is difficult to get that out again, if done by a man of the right age and manner, and if they were sensitive just then with fright. The thought of this bore me up against friend Jackson's flowing opportunities, and made me an impartial critic of his work. He looked at me uneasily, when I brought him to this point; and all his experience in "carrying over," and contingoes, and settling days, and whatever else they call it, was of very little use to him with such a ticklish stock. "Come in here, George," he said; "how am I to talk, as if it were a question of exchange and discount, when I see her bright hair dancing in the sun like that? But let me look. Don't say a word, until she goes away." "Here are two cart-saddles and a pair of blinkers, and a truss of clover hay. If her young spring-carrots can dance through all that, they must beat Berenice's and Helen's of Troy. Don't be quite a fool, Jack. You ought to know that girls can't abide being stared at with their slops on. They have got a finer word for it--peg something, in the novels. But Grace never gets herself up for a rustic surprise, like those fashionable dairymaids."