* * * * * On their return from the Barracks Mrs. Thatcher and Edith Stevens left the men on the piazza and went up-stairs for the ostensible purpose of lying down, but with that ease with which two women change their plans when once alone they found themselves sitting in Marian's room, engaged in a heart-to-heart conversation. "I really think he might do," Edith remarked, à propos of nothing. As Mrs. Thatcher was intimately acquainted with Edith's mental processes the remark was more intelligible than might have been expected. "You don't mean Philip Hamlen?" Edith laughed. "No; you warned me off of him yesterday. I mean Mr. Cosden." "At it again?" Marian laughed. "Edith, you are absolutely incorrigible! It has been so long since you have played ducks and drakes with a man that I really believed you had reformed. You are old enough to know better!" "I presume it will be the same with him as with the others," Edith sighed. "That is my great weakness, I admit: I like a man just so long, and then he bores me stiff. I don't see how a married woman stands it to have only one man around her all the time. If you were as honest as I am you would admit that it would be a relief to you, every now and then if you could pour out your breakfast coffee with some one else sitting in front of you instead of Harry." "Harry answers very well, thank you." "Habit, nothing else," Edith insisted. "He's as much a part of the family furniture as the grand piano. But that's what gives me hope: if you and so many other women can endure it, why can't I?" "There are hundreds of men; why pick on Mr. Cosden?" "I had a long, experimental conversation with him last night while you and Mr. Huntington were holding your revival meeting on the pier, and I really think he might do. Tell me what you know about him." "Only what Harry has told me. They have had some business dealings together, and Harry says he has made a lot of money. The fact that Monty Huntington is his friend is his best recommendation." "Mr. Huntington has a good social position in Boston, hasn't he?" "Good heavens, yes! I believe one of his ancestors discovered Beacon Street, or something of that kind; but that doesn't imply that Mr. Cosden has the same position. A bachelor may have friends at his clubs whom he does not necessarily bring into his social circle,--especially in Boston." "Mr. Cosden is frightfully commercial," Edith meditated aloud. "So are you," Marian broke in laughing. "I don't mind that," Edith continued, "so long as he has a human side. I believe I could serve as a counter-irritant to keep him from remaining merely a machine. "You mustn't take away his capacity as provider," Marian teased her; "he would need a fairly stiff income to sail the good ship 'Edith Stevens.'"