"Indeed." But while I was inclined to be bored by Mr. Mint's ideas, I soon found that I had to make them my own, and solemnly repeat them all over again, for when he became aware of my presence he fled to the dining-room, leaving me to bear his cross. The burden was light enough awhile, for Pearl Veal is so beautiful. She delights my eye. I could sit with her by the hour, as I can lounge beneath a spreading tree on some hill-top, smoking, watching the valley below, thought arrested, in my mind mirrored the rolling fields, the woods, the meadows, the blue sky, the lazy clouds, and cheerful sunlight. To me she always is a lovely view, a prospect restful. But the world can offer few so fair; it seeks to hide its homeliness; it makes its laws to suit the greatest number. Talk it commands--talk, else you stare--talk small, say things inane, chatter, chatter, let the brain run mad, gabble, gabble, and so forget the universal plainness. Pearl Veal, I suspect, would revel in the quiet valley, away from the clatter of mills and the roar of trade. Her mood is peaceful. She knows that Nature keeps the eyes open and the mouth closed, but perverse man reverses the rule. She would speak when she had something worth while saying. At conversation she fails lamentably. But the world says, talk, and that day it interfered with my happiness. Talk we did, or rather I did, for Miss Veal seems not yet to have learned that the art of polite conversation is to settle nothing, to leave everything up in the air, and if by chance you do make a definite statement, to preserve the subject for further use by that saving, "Don't you think so?" When I said that I believed it was going to rain, she agreed with me and that ended it. When I brought up tennis as an absorbingly interesting subject for sustained repartee, she knocked it on the head in like fashion and left me standing first on one foot and then on the other, gazing into space. Some hours later, it seemed, an innocent young man, with an eye to beauty, relieved me, and I bolted for the dining-room, away off in the rear, where Miss Wherry was pouring tea, and took me under her protecting wing. Radigan was there, penned up in a corner between Coppe, the business half of the architectural firm of Coppe & Coppe, and young Crayon, whose sole hold on life is a Beaux Arts education and a drawing-board. Then there were several bear customers' wives, who were standing around the great table sampling things, and talking between bites to one or two of the social representatives of leading real-estate houses. A few persons, strangers to me, wandered in, took a nibble or two, looked absently about as though they were in a dream, and then ambled out. When I had had a cup of tea, a sugar-coated bit of cake with cream inside, a glass of champagne, and a chocolate peppermint, I wandered out, too. Miss Veal gave me a lustrous smile on parting, and Mrs. Radigan said she was so glad I could come.