"If it wouldn't overpower your reason, I should like it. It would be such a convenience to me." "Well, I mean, papa," said Lillie, coloring at her audacity, "that I don't like Mrs. Larue!" "Don't like Mrs. Larue! Why, she is as kind to you as she can possibly be. I thought you were on the best of terms." "I mean that I don't like her well enough to call her Mamma." "Call her Mamma!" repeated the Doctor, staring over his spectacles in amazement. "You don't mean?--upon my honor, you are too nonsensical, Lillie." "Am I? Oh, I am so delighted!" exclaimed Lillie eagerly. "But I _was_ so afraid." "Do you think I am in my dotage?" inquired the Doctor, almost indignant. "No no, papa. Don't be vexed with me. I dare say it was very absurd in me. But I do think she is so artful and designing." "She is a curious woman, we know," observed Ravenel. "She certainly has some--peculiarities." Lillie laughed outright, and said, "Oh yes," with a gay little air of satire. "But she is too young to think of me," pursued the Doctor. "She can't be more than twenty-five." "Papa!!" protested Lillie. "She is thir--ty! Have you lost your memory?" "Thirty! Is it possible? Really, I am growing old. I am constantly understating other people's ages. I have caught myself at it repeatedly. I don't know whether it is forgetfulness, or inability to realize the flight of time, or an instinctive effort to make myself out a modern by showing that my intimates are youthful. But I am constantly doing it. Do you recollect how I have laughed about Elderkin for this same trick? He is always relating anecdotes of his youth in a way which would lead you to suppose that the events happened some fifteen or twenty years ago. And yet he is seventy. I mustn't laugh at Elderkin any more." "Nonsense!" said Lillie. "You are not a bit like him. He blacks his hair to correspond with his dates. He means to humbug people. And then you are not old." "But, to return to Mrs. Larue," observed the Doctor. "She has a clear head; she is pretty sensible. She is not a woman to put herself in a false or ridiculous position. I really have not observed anything of what you hint." "Oh no. Of course not. Men never do; they are _so_ stupid! Of course you wouldn't observe anything until she went on her knees and made you a formal declaration. I was afraid you might say, 'Yes,' in your surprise." "My dear, don't talk in that way of a lady. You degrade your own sex by such jesting."