Mr. Henry Wilding suited himself easily to a room in a house which stood just beyond his cousin's. He wanted little to make him at home; for he had only pitched his tent in this university town, and had no thought of settling in it. His wish was to get what he came for and to go again as little encumbered with baggage as he had come. Something of this sort he had been saying, not long after his established routine had begun, in a letter to the lady to whom he had the good fortune to be engaged. "I never could feel settled so far from you," he went on gallantly; "and I want only so much home at hand as will keep me from daily discontent. So it is exceedingly convenient to have my cousin Julia next door. I feel as one might who lived over a grocery-shop: there would be no fear of starving, at all events. When my supply of family feeling runs low, I drop in upon Julia and lay in enough to last a few days. Her friend, who makes a home with her, of whom I wrote in my last, does not greatly interest me. She says very little; but I am willing to grant that she is uncommonly pretty. I don't know why I say this in such grudging fashion. If some one else be fair to me, what care I how fair this 't other one be? Julia admires her greatly; but I suspect she is one of the kind whom one needs to marry ever to get at. Julia is as much married to her as one woman can be to another; and that explains why she sees so much in her. She sometimes reports scraps of conversations which she has held with this Miss Lillie Vila. Unless Julia makes up both sides of the conversation, her friend certainly is intelligent, and, I am afraid, witty. I say this last because it piques me that I have never extracted any witty remark from her. "As for John, he is imperturbably good-natured. His profession keeps him away a good deal; but when he is at home he seems to do nothing but read a book by the fireside and chuckle to himself. Julia and Miss Vila both admire him greatly; but I suspect it is necessary to reconstruct him out of imaginary material before one can get to think very highly of him. Women do this naturally. I can always make myself humble by thinking that you do it with me.