"I haven't a notion," said Sir Gaston. "All I know is that it will be later rather than sooner. My daughter is out for what she calls a good time--by which, of course, she means an irresponsible one. She has enough instinct and good feeling to realize that once she is married irresponsibility will cease. She has not enough emotional dependence to be impatient for marriage. Heathcote seems to me precisely similar in temperament. Hence I look upon them as two of the most enviable creatures living. I sit and watch them at their superficial jokes and superficial wranglings, and most of all at their frivolous plan-makings for the morrow, and consider them the heirs of the ages in the happiest sense. The best of it is that both are really exceedingly sensible, and it only needs a shock--such as standing at the altar steps in their best clothes, with a really serious person in a surplice saying really serious things--to steady them for life. Ann, who has already shown her capacity for work and routine, having learned typing thoroughly in an office, will instantly become a wife and Heathcote instantly a husband. He will adopt regular habits, come home to lunch, and very likely keep accounts. The very harmless form of wild oats that they are sowing now I don't fear in the least. I should be much more alarmed if they were always embracing and whenever they walked out he took her arm and they were both hastening the wedding: then I should fear that the flame might die down too quickly, and trouble follow. But these two--they're all right. They have a public contempt for each other which contains the best promise." I dare say Sir Gaston is right. He seems to be shrewd. But his remarks caused me to press Naomi's hand under the rug with more than usual fondness. Yet Ann was not really selfish, even if she shared with her father a perversity which made her willing to appear so; for when once we found ourselves in a block, and were conscious of the crying of a small child, with its mother, father, and two other children in a donkey barrow, it was Ann who saved the situation. Never have I heard such pitiful wailing. The mother was tired and cross, and in no mood to be patient with it; the father was cross too, and the other children began to whimper in sympathy. Before anyone knew what she was about, Ann had jumped out of the car, taken the child from its mother, and was giving it one of Dollie's expensive chocolate creams and saying pretty crooning things to it. The mother and other children had the rest of the box, and in a short time all were happy again.