"Of course," he began, "having a legal mind, I regard a wife as a piece of personal property, and"-- "There!" she interrupted. "It is perfectly maddening to hear you talk in that way about women. I hate it." "I'm sure I don't mean any disrespect," he answered soberly. "I should have married long ago, had I been able." "Whom would you have married?" she demanded. "You speak as if you had only to make your selection, and any girl would be glad of the chance to take you." "That is because I think so highly of the penetration of your sex," he retorted, with a return to his light manner; adding, with some bitterness, "but, when a man is as poor as a church mouse, he can have as little thought of marrying, and being given in marriage, as the angels in heaven." "Don't be profane. You have your profession." "Oh! I earn enough to keep soul and body together, if I don't do too much for either. But this is not a cheerful subject, even if it were in good taste for me to be complaining of poverty. Did you know my nephews came last night?" "Yes; and I am so glad! It is always pleasant to have Hazard Breck here. Of course, they'll be at the picnic." "Yes. Frank, you know, has graduated, and Hazard is a junior. It is two years since I have seen them." "They probably feel ten years older. We are to have company too. Grandmother is coming." With such discourse they rolled over the country road towards Mackerel Cove. Under the gay surface of the conversation was a sting for Patty in the lawyer's allusion to his poverty. He was usually very reticent about his affairs; and it may have been for that reason that the gossips of Montfield called him "close." "He's close-mouthed and he's close-fisted," Mrs. Brown was accustomed to say; "and most generally the things go together." To Patty's thinking few faults could be worse. To an open-handed Sanford, avarice was the most disgusting of vices; and this fatal defect in her companion was like the feet of clay of the image of gold. CHAPTER IV. THE PICNIC. Seated upon a stone which happened to be clean enough for even her exacting taste, Mrs. Sanford was conversing with Mrs. Brown, a frowsy lady whose house-keeping was a perennial source of offence to her order-loving neighbor. Mrs. Brown was a miracle of tardiness,--the last-comer at every gathering, the last guest to depart. Indeed, so fixed were her friends in the habit of expecting her to be behindhand, that she could have chosen no surer method of throwing into confusion any plan wherein she was concerned than by appearing for once on time; which, to do her justice, she never did. "She is so slow," Will Sanford once said, "that she always looks solemn at a wedding, because the grief of the last funeral has just got into her face. Her smiles appear by the time another funeral comes."