"He looks as if he had been so much oftener vexed, and so much seldomer pleased than you do," continued I, mentally comparing the smooth though weather-beaten benignity of the straight-cut features beside me, with the austere and frown-puckered gravity of my father's. "Does he?" he answers, with an air of half-surprised interest, as if the subject had never struck him in that light before. "Poor fellow! I am sorry if it is so. Ah, you see"--with a smile--"he has _six_ more reasons for wrinkles than I have." "You mean us, I suppose," I answer matter-of-factly. "As to that, I think he draws quite as many wrinkles on our faces as we do on his." Then, rather ashamed of my over-candor, I add, with hurried bluntness, "You have never been married, I suppose?" He half turns away his head. "No--not yet! I have not yet had that good fortune." I am inwardly amused at the power of his denial. Surely, surely he might say in the words of Lancelot: "Had I chosen to wed, I had been wedded earlier, sweet Elaine." "And you?" he asks, turning with an accent of playfulness toward me. "Not yet," I answer, laughing, "and most likely I shall have to answer 'not yet' to that question as often as it is put to me till the end of the chapter." "Why so?" I shrug my shoulders. "In moments of depression it strikes Barbara and me, that me and Tou Tou shall end by being three old cats together." "Are you so anxious to be married?" he asks with an air of wonder, "in such a hurry to leave so happy a home?" "Every one knows best where his own shoe pinches," I answer vernacularly. "I am afraid that it does not sound very lady-like, but since you ask me the question, I _am_ rather anxious. Barbara is not: _I_ am." A shade of I cannot exactly say what emotion--it _looks_ like disappointment, but surely it cannot be that--passes across the sunshine of his face. "All my plans hinge on my marrying," I continue, feeling drawn, I do not know how or why, into confidential communication to this almost total stranger, "and what is more, on my marrying a rich man." "And what are your plans?" he asks, with an air of benevolent interest, but that unexplained shade is still there. "Their name is Legion," I answer; "you will be very tired before I get to the end of them." "Try me." "Firstly then," say I, narratively, "my husband must have a great deal of interest in several professions--the army, the navy, the bar--so as to give the boys a helping hand; then he must have some shooting--good shooting for them; for them all, that is, except Bobby! _never_ shall _he_ fire a gun in my preserves!" My mind again wanders away to my vengeances, and I break off. "Well!" "He must also keep two or three horses for them to hunt: Algy _loves_ hunting, but he hardly ever gets a day. He is so big, poor dear old boy, that nobody ever gives him a mount--" "Yes?"