"Oh, you know how he is," said Cora. "He didn't speak of it exactly. But after you'd gone, he asked me----" She stopped with a little gulp, an expression of keen distaste about her mouth. "Oh, he wants me to wear my ring," she continued, with sudden rapidity: "and how the dickens _can_ I when I can't even tell him it's been made into a pendant! He wants to speak to father; he wants to _announce_ it. He's sold out his business for what he thinks is a good deal of money, and he wants me to marry him next month and take some miserable little trip, I don't know where, for a few weeks, before he invests what he's made in another business. Oh!" she cried. "It's a _horrible_ thing to ask a girl to do: to settle down--just housekeeping, housekeeping, housekeeping forever in this stupid, stupid town! It's so unfair! Men are just possessive; they think it's loving you to want to possess you themselves. A beautiful `love'! It's so mean! Men!" She sprang up and threw out both arms in a vehement gesture of revolt. "Damn 'em, I wish they'd let me _alone_!" Laura's eyes had lost their quiet; they showed a glint of tears, and she was breathing quickly. In this crisis of emotion the two girls went to each other silently; Cora turned, and Laura began to unfasten Cora's dress in the back. "Poor Richard!" said Laura presently, putting into her mouth a tiny pearl button which had detached itself at her touch. "This was his first evening in the overflow. No wonder he was troubled!" "Pooh!" said Cora. "As if you and mamma weren't good enough for him to talk to! He's spoiled. He's so used to being called `the most popular man in town' and knowing that every girl on Corliss Street wanted to marry him----" She broke off, and exclaimed sharply: "I wish they would!" "Cora!" "Oh, I suppose you mean that's the reason _I_ went in for him?" "No, no," explained Laura hurriedly. "I only meant, stand still." "Well, it was!" And Cora's abrupt laugh had the glad, free ring fancy attaches to the merry confidences of a buccaneer in trusted company. Laura knelt to continue unfastening the dress; and when it was finished she extended three of the tiny buttons in her hand. "They're always loose on a new dress," she said. "I'll sew them all on tight, to-morrow." Cora smiled lovingly. "You good old thing," she said. "You looked pretty to-night." "That's nice!" Laura laughed, as she dropped the buttons into a little drawer of her bureau. It was an ugly, cheap, old bureau, its veneer loosened and peeling, the mirror small and flawed--a piece of furniture in keeping with the room, which was small, plain and hot, its only ornamental adjunct being a silver-framed photograph of Mrs. Madison, with Cora, as a child of seven or eight, upon her lap. "You really do look ever so pretty," asserted Cora.