“It matters a great deal,” Ernest would answer. “We are young; it is our time for enjoyment. They have had their day. You don’t suppose our fathers and mothers feel half as keenly or enjoy half as much as we do? Then why shouldn’t they give up, and let us have the means of enjoying? I don’t understand that sort of dog-in-the-manger philosophy,” said the young man, with a loftiness of moralizing which almost impressed Nelly, in spite of her higher perceptions. She was seated in a low basket-work chair under the lime-trees, looking up with puckers of care upon her pretty forehead which had no business there, at the self-absorbed countenance of her lover. He was cutting down the young lime-shoots which grew up in a miniature forest round the trees, with a little cane in his hand. It was autumn, and the leaves fell at every stroke. He had one hand in his pocket, careless, yet disappointed; laying down the law, and feeling himself above its action. Nelly gazed at him with a mute inquiry--a close, anxious, silent investigation, which she could not herself have explained. Yes; she was interrogating Nature and circumstances, and the present and the future; puzzled between her own instincts, her own ancient certainties of belief, and the philosophy of him who ought to be more to her than all else on earth. He was cleverer than she was, better able to express himself: was he more right than she? Or was he wrong, all wrong--wrong in feeling, in principle, in all that makes a man? What a question this was for a girl to ask herself! And she did not ask it; but only looked up at him, mutely wondering, trying to penetrate the real meaning that was in him--a meaning which must, she felt, be better and higher than anything he said.