Miss Hubbard had no design upon Thomas. How could she have? She knew nothing about him. She would have done the same with any gentleman she liked well enough to chatter to. And if Thomas felt it and thought that Laura Hubbard was more entertaining than sober Lucy Burton, he made up to Lucy for it in his own idea by asserting to himself that, after all, she was far handsomer than Miss Hubbard, handsome as she was. Yet I should never think of calling Lucy handsome. She was lovely--almost beautiful, too. _Handsome_ always indicates more or less vulgarity--no, I mean commonness--in my ears. And certainly, whatever she might be capable of, had she been blessed with poverty, Miss Hubbard was as common as she was handsome. Thomas was fool enough to revert to Byron to try his luck with that. She soon made him ashamed of showing any liking for such a silly thing as poetry. That piqued him as well, however. "You sing, I suppose?" he said. "Oh, yes, when I can't help it--after dinner, sometimes." "Well, you sing poetry, don't you?" "I don't know. One must have some words or other just to make her open her mouth. I never know what they're about. Why should I? Nobody ever pays the least attention to them--or to the music either, except it be somebody that wants to marry you." But why should I go further with the record of such talk? It is not interesting to me, and, therefore, can hardly be so to my reader. Even if I had the art to set it forth aright, I hope I should yet hold to my present belief, that nothing in which the art is uppermost is worth the art expended upon it. Thomas was a little shocked at her coolness, certainly; but at the same time that very coolness seemed a challenge. Before they had reached the house again, he was vexed to find he had made no impression upon Miss Hubbard. Farewell to such fencing. By the time he had heard her sing, and his father and he were on their way home again, I am glad to say that Thomas had had nearly enough of her. He thought her voice loud and harsh in speech, showy and distressing in song, and her whole being _bravura_. The contrasts in Lucy had come back upon him with a gush of memorial loveliness; for, as I have said, she still held the fortress of his heart, and held it for its lawful owner. Scarcely were they seated in the railway carriage, of which they were the sole occupants, when the elder Worboise threw a shot across the bows of the younger. "Well, Tom, my boy," he said, rubbing his lawyer palms, "how do you like Miss Hubbard?" "Oh, very well, father," answered Thomas, indifferently. "She's a very jolly sort of girl." "She's worth a hundred thousand," said his father, in a tone that would have been dry but for a touch of slight resentment at the indifference, possibly in the father's view irreverence, with which he spoke of her. "Girls?" asked Thomas. "Pounds," answered his father, clenchingly.