"But don't you think, Mr. March, a man of that sort is apt to love prematurely and very faultily? His best fruit doesn't fall first. Haven't you observed that a man's first love is just what a woman finds it hardest to take in earnest?" "Yes, I have observed that! And still--are you too cynical to believe that there are men to whom first love is everything and second love impossible?" "No," said Barbara, with true resentment, "I'm not too cynical. But--" she looked her prettiest--"still I don't believe it." John turned on her a hard glance which instantly softened. It is a singular fact that the length and droop of a girl's eyelashes have great weight in an argument. "And yet," she resumed, but paused for John to wave away the train-boy with his books. "And yet what?" asked March, ever so kindly. "And yet, that first love is everything, is what every woman would like every man to believe, until he learns better." Her steadfast gaze and slow smile made John laugh. He was about to give a railing answer when the brakeman announced twenty minutes for dinner. "What! It can't----" he looked at his watch. "Why, would you have imagined?" O yes; her only surprise--a mild one--was that he didn't know it. At table she sat three seats away, with her Northern friends between; and when they were again roaring over streams, and through hills and valleys, and the commercial travelers, whose number had increased to four, were discussing aerial navigation, and March cut short his after-dinner smoke and came back to resume his conversation, he found Miss Garnet talking to the Fairs, and not to be moved by the fact--which he felt it the merest courtesy to state--that the best views were on the other side of the car. Thereupon he went to the car's far end and wrote a short letter to his mother, who had exacted the pledge of one a day, which she did not promise to answer.