"From what I know of him, I think he will be able to hold up his head in spite of it." They both laughed. "By the way, that reminds me"--and Lucy produced a letter from her pocket--"he is awfully anxious that you should come to us for a few weeks this vacation. You have no idea what a conquest you have made in that quarter. In fact I have been shining with reflected lustre ever since he met you. He thinks there must be something in me after all, since I have had the sense to appreciate you." "I wonder wherein the attraction between us lies," Mona said reflectively. "I suppose I am really less grave than I appear, and you on the whole are less of a flibbertigibbet than the world takes you to be. So we meet on something of a common ground. I see in you a side of my nature which in the ordinary course of events I don't find it easy to express, and possibly you see something of the same sort in me. Each of us relieves the other of the necessity----" "Don't prose, please!" interrupted Lucy. "I never yet found the smallest difficulty in expressing myself, and--the saints be praised!--you are not always quite so dull as you are to-day. I suppose you won't come? What are tennis-parties and picnics to a Wandering Jew like you?" "It is awfully kind of your father. I can't tell you how much I appreciate his goodness; but I am afraid I can't come." "I thought so. Is it the North Pole or the wilds of Arabia this time?" Mona laughed. "To tell the truth," she said, "I must have a day with my accounts and my bank-book before I stir from Grower Street." "What! _you_, Crœsus?" "The reproach is deserved, whether you meant it for one or not. I have been spending too much. What with extra laboratory work in winter, and coaching last term----" "And all those pretty dresses." "And all those pretty dresses," repeated Mona, with the air of one who is making a deliberate confession. "And nice damp uncut volumes." "Not too many of those," with a defiant little nod of self-defence. "And divers charities." "Nay, alas! My bank-book has not suffered much from them." "And concert tickets, and gloves for impecunious friends, not to say a couple of excellent stalls from time to time----" "Nonsense, Lucy! Considering how hard we have worked, I don't think you and I have been at all extravagant in our amusements. No, no, I ought to be able to afford all that. My father left me four hundred a year, more or less." "Good heavens!" If Mona had added a cipher, the sum could scarcely have impressed her companion more. "There! that is so like you schoolgirls----" "Schoolgirls, indeed!"