"Yes, it's all right; Nick's friends can come along as soon as they like," Chase answered. "And are none of the Willoughbys to be there this summer?" Dolly went on. "No; Nick has gone to Carlsbad--he isn't well. And Richard is off yachting. Walter has taken a cottage at Newport." Dolly already knew this latter fact. But she wished to hear it again. Rinda now appeared, ushering in Malachi Hill. The young clergyman was so unusually erect that he seemed tall; his face was flushed, and his eyes had a triumphant expression. He looked first at Dolly, then at Chase. "I've done it!" he announced, dashing his clerical hat down upon the sofa. "That Miss Mackintosh has called me 'Manikin' once too often. She did it again just now--in the alley behind your house. And I up and kissed her!" "You didn't," said Chase, breaking into a roaring laugh. "Yes; I did. For three whole years and more, Mr. Chase, that woman has treated me with perfectly outrageous contempt. She has seemed to think that I was nothing at all, that I wasn't a man; she has walked on me, stamped on me, shoved me right and left, and even kicked me, as it were. I have felt that I couldn't stand it _much_ longer. And I have tried to think of a way to take her down. Suddenly, just now, it came to me that nothing on earth would take her down quite so much as that. And so when she came out with her accustomed epithet, I just gave her a hurl, and did it! It is true I'm a clergyman, and I have acted as though I had kept on being only an insurance agent. But a man is a man after all, in spite of the cloth," concluded Malachi, belligerently. "Oh, don't apologize," said Dolly. "It's too delicious!" And then she and Horace Chase, for once of the same mind, laughed until they were exhausted. Meanwhile the sculptress had appeared in Miss Billy's sitting-room. She came in without knocking, her footfall much more quiet than usual. "Wilhelmina, how old are you?" she demanded, after she had carefully closed the door. "Why--you know. I am thirty-nine," Billy answered, putting down with tender touch the book she was reading (_The Blue Ridge in the Glacial Period_). "And I am forty," pursued Maud, meditatively. "It is never too late to add to one's knowledge, Wilhelmina, if the knowledge is accurate; that is, if it is observed from life. And I have stopped in for a moment, on my way home, to mention something which _is_ so observed. You know all the talk and fuss there is in poetry, Wilhelmina, about kisses (I mean when given by a man)? I am now in a position to tell you, from actual experience, what they amount to." She came nearer, and lowered her voice. "They are _very far indeed_ from being what is described. There is nothing in them. Nothing whatever!" CHAPTER XXI