"I don't know, after all, whether it is the right way. Probably their vulgarity is all on the surface. I believe there are thousands of girls like that who only want some large-souled woman to take them by the hand, and draw out their own womanhood. How can they help it if their life has been barren of ideals?" He made a mental survey of the women in the neighbourhood, in search of some one capable of performing such a function. "What a pity it is that they cannot see _you_ as you are," he said, looking at the dim outline of her face. "Large-souled women do not grow on every hedge." "Perhaps it would be more to the purpose if I could see myself as they see me," she answered thoughtfully. "After all, with the honestest intentions, we scan our lives as we do our own poetry, laying stress on the right syllables, and passing lightly over a halting foot. You force me to confess that I said some very ill-natured things about those girls after they were gone; and I had not their excuse of being still in the chrysalis stage. They may make better butterflies than I yet. Even a woman can never tell how a girl is going to turn out." He laughed. "What is bred in the bone--" he said, "Their mother is my ideal of all that is vulgar and pretentious." "Poor children!" said Mona. "And the best of it is," he said, "that she began life as a small----" He stopped short and the blood rushed over his face. "Well," said Mona quietly, "as a what?" "_Milliner_," he said, kicking a stone violently out of his way, in a tempest of anger at his own stupidity. "You don't mean to say," said Mona, "that you were afraid of hurting my feelings? Oh, please give me credit for having the soul of a human being!" He walked with her to her own door that night. It was after dark, to be sure, but I am inclined to think that he might have done the same had it been noonday; and when he got home he asked his aunt no more questions about "Miss Simpson's niece." CHAPTER XVI. "JOHN HOGG'S MACHINE." "He is curiously _simpatico_," said Mona to herself the next morning. "I don't know that I ever knew any one with whom I felt less necessity for clearing up my fog-beswathed utterances, or for breaking down my brilliant metaphors in milk; it is pleasant to be able to walk straight off into the eternals with somebody; but I like a man to be more of a healthy animal." And a sunshiny memory passed through her mind of the "moral Antiseptic," the dear brotherly Sahib. "I wonder who the other botanist was?" she went on presently, tumbling her pillows into a more comfortable position. "The Professor's assistant perhaps, or possibly a professor himself. He certainly was a scientist, every inch of him, from his silent tongue to the tips of his ill-groomed fingers."