"Of course," continued Mrs. Lindley, thoughtfully, "she seldom _says_ anything interesting, but that may be because she so seldom has a chance to say anything at all." Richard refused to perceive this allusion. "Curious that Laura should have sent it to me," he said. "She's never seemed interested in my opinion about anything. I don't recall her ever speaking to me on any subject whatever--except one." He returned his attention to his plate, but his mother did not appear to agree with him that the topic was exhausted. "`Except one'?" she repeated, after waiting for some time. "Yes," he replied, in his habitual preoccupied and casual tone. "Or perhaps two. Not more than two, I should say--and in a way you'd call that only one, of course. Bread, Joe." "What two, Richard?" "Cora," he said, with gentle simplicity, "and me." CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Mrs. Lindley had arranged for her son a small apartment on the second floor, and it was in his own library and smoking-room that Richard, comfortable in a leather-chair by a reading-lamp, after dinner, opened Laura's ledger. The first page displayed no more than a date now eighteen months past, and the line: "Love came to me to-day." The next page was dated the next day, and, beneath, he read: "That was all I _could_ write, yesterday. I think I was too excited to write. Something seemed to be singing in my breast. I couldn't think in sentences--not even in words. How queer it is that I had decided to keep a diary, and bound this book for it, and now the first thing I have written in it was _that_! It will not be a diary. It shall be _your_ book. I shall keep it sacred to You and write to You in it. How strange it will be if the day ever comes when I shall show it to You! If it should, you would not laugh at it, for of course the day couldn't come unless you understood. I cannot think it will ever come--that day! But maybe---- No, I mustn't let myself hope too much that it will, because if I got to hoping too much, and you didn't like me, it would hurt too much. People who expect nothing are never disappointed--I must keep that in mind. Yet _every_ girl has a _right_ to hope for her own man to come for her some time, hasn't she? It's not easy to discipline the wanting to hope--since _yesterday_! "I think I must always have thought a great deal about you without knowing it. We really know so little what we think: our minds are going on all the time and we hardly notice them. It is like a queer sort of factory--the owner only looks in once in a while and most of the time hasn't any idea what sort of goods his spindles are turning out.