"I don't think she would care about it if she couldn't tell every one about it," said Maud. "She doesn't strike me as a real country-lover, does she you?" "Oh, I dare say not in the sense you are, dear," said her mother. "I always wonder where you get it from. Fancy your father or I existing in the country!" "But you said this moment that you couldn't understand why we ever live in town." This was the kind of thing which frequently occurred when Mrs. Brereton chattered to her daughter. Maud seemed to think that in light conversation people meant what they said, an error so astounding that it seemed almost hopeless to point it out. "Dear Maud, how literal you are!" she said. "You don't seem to realize that one has moods which may last a year or more, and may only last a minute. That one lasted less than a minute." Maud laughed. "How unsettling!" she said. "For how can one know whether one really likes anything? It may only last a minute." Mrs. Brereton plunged at the opening, a header, so to speak, into the frothy water. "Ah, that is where wisdom comes in," she said. "You have not only to choose and to do what you like, but to choose that which your reason dictates, that which you know is really advantageous for you. Life would be a very simple matter if one only followed one's inclinations. It is a lesson one cannot learn too early." There was a short pause, in which Mrs. Brereton passed in rapid summary to herself all the occasions she could remember on which she had not followed her inclination. It seemed to her that there were an immense number; she was always doing kind things, and the pause would have been a long one had not Maud broken it. "I suppose you mean that you want me to marry Anthony Maxwell!" she remarked in a perfectly even voice. This was an occasion on which her mother was absolutely unable to decide whether Maud's disconcerting directness sprang from internal and childlike simplicity or a brutally frank insight into the diplomacy of others. But she put the best construction possible on it. "Dear Maud," she exclaimed effusively, "it is too dear of you to meet me halfway like that. To tell you the truth, I was a little shy about opening the subject to you, as I did not know what you thought; but it is much easier for me to talk about it now." "Much," said Maud. "To think that you should have guessed!" said the other; "but you always were so quick." "It did not need much quickness after my prolonged conversation with him last night." "So you had a good talk to him," said Mrs. Brereton. "I am so glad." Maud raised her eyebrows. "Surely you meant me to," she said. "Whenever I looked up, meaning to go, I always thought I saw you pinning me down again. Did you not?" Mrs. Brereton was not quite sure that things were going comfortably.