Hal shook her wise young head. “I don’t know. You never can tell what you’ll do when you get that disease; but I do know that I’d be miserable if I did. Money, and plenty of it, is necessary to my happiness. You see we’re not so horribly rich. Papa gives mamma and May and me two thousand dollars each a year, and his income comes mostly from his practice. We haven’t anything else but a little house in town, and Peele Manor—which of course we’ll never sell—and a big farm adjoining. Bev runs that, and has the income from it—about three thousand dollars a year. When he wants more mamma gets it for him, and when he’s married of course he’ll have a lot more. Two thousand stands me in very well now, but as a married woman I want nothing under thirty thousand a year—and that’s a modest ambition enough. You can’t be anybody in New York on less. Oh, dear—life is a burden.” “Your woes are not very terrible,” said Patience, drily. “Oh, you’d think so if you were me. We suffer according to our capacities and point of view. What is comedy to one is tragedy to another. If I had to wear the same clothes for two seasons I’d be as miserable as a defeated candidate for the Presidency. Beer makes one man drunk and champagne another. Bev, by the way, never drinks. He’s rather straight than otherwise. What’s your ideal of a man, by the way? Of course you have an ideal.” “Oh, I don’t know,” said Patience, vaguely. “A man with a big brain and a big heart and a big arm.” Miss Peele laughed heartily. “You are not exacting in your combinations, not in the least.” The week passed delightfully to Patience, although Hal became rather restless toward the end. She arranged Patience’s hair in six different fashions, then decided that the large soft coil suited her best. Patience’s nails were manicured, she was taught how to smoke cigarettes, and select extracts from French novels were read to her. Hal was an accomplished gossip, and regaled her hostess with all the whispered scandals of New York society. She was a liberal education. Beverly did not call, nor did he write, and Hal anathematised him freely. “But I have my ideas on the subject,” she said darkly. “Just you wait.” XIX On the evening of Hal’s departure, as Patience was braiding her hair for the night, there was a sharp ring at the bell, and a few moments later Ellen came upstairs with a card inscribed “Mr. Beverly Peele.” Patience felt disposed to send word that she had retired, so thoroughly had she lost interest in the young man; but reflecting that he had probably ridden ten miles on a cold night to see her, told Ellen to light all the burners in the parlour, and twisted up her hair. As she went downstairs she saw a heavy overcoat on the hall table. “If it had occurred to me that he had come by train,” she thought, “I’d have let him go home again.” He came forward with his charming smile, looking remarkably handsome in his evening clothes.