Mrs. Harrison reached for her tatting which lay near her book. "You say, Mr. Cannon, you wonder women so seldom take advantage of the marriage settlement provisions?" Her eyes glancing from one to the other of the young girls grouped about her fireside and then returning to Mr. Cannon seemed to say, "Here are cases in possible point to be. Consider them." What she said, however, was, "How many young girls, even in the class you know, are likely to have heard of an ante-nuptial provision? Or as things go in our American life, would conceive any need of protection in her own case? American women usually marry for affection, which implies faith. Though the real truth is, we're not apt to think about marriage in any sense such as this at all, having been trained neither to the knowledge nor the thinking. I take it, Mr. Cannon," smiling, "that you will make it your business to instruct the young lady of your choice in these points beforehand?" Mr. Cannon laughed, but he got red, too. Was Mrs. Harrison too honest thus to be sowing insubordination in the camps of the possible future and not acknowledge it? She put her tatting down. "I am not attacking the institution of marriage in the least, Maudie and Juliette, Selina, Adele and my Amanthus. I am not attacking it at all; I am repudiating woman's helplessness within the institution. Adele knows more of what I am talking about, I see it in her eyes. Adele is a browser among books." "Mills on 'The Subjection of Woman,'" murmured Mr. Cannon still red. "This my defence. I lent it to her." Hetty appeared again, this time ushering Bliss and Mr. Tuttle Jones. "Oh," from Amanthus, "_if_ you knew how glad I am to see you both. They've been talking and talking, and are still talking, and I haven't been able to make out one thing of what they think they're talking about." Bliss ruddy-haired and pretty boy, hurried to her side, his face alight at the welcome. Bliss was twenty-one now, and his father had given him a wee interest in a box factory, and he was up and gone from home by half-past six in the mornings, and was tremendously proud and in earnest and interested, and very much in love with Amanthus. Mr. Jones, his neat person and neat features and small moustache immaculate, finished his greetings without a shade of hurry, then made his way to Selina. Maud had wandered away now, and he took the place she had vacated. Whereupon the color began to rise in Selina's cheek, warm and permeating, and rich. For the eyes of Mr. Jones were sweeping over her face, her brow, her hair, even to the pale burnished knot at the nape of her neck, and sweeping back again over the whole. There were other masculine eyes that might have been doing the same that had declined their prerogative. "I knew the style was yours when I asked you to try it" murmured Tuttle. The color flamed higher.