"The trouble with Thornton Stanley was his own uncertainty," said Fanny; "he was not in the least firm about staying over here, though he pretended he was. I could see that he would be always going home. More than that, I should not be at all surprised if at the end of five years--three even--he should have bought or built a house in New York, and settled down there forever." "And you don't want that for your American daughter, renegade?" Mrs. Churchill unfolded her arms. "No one can be a warmer American than I am, Philip--no one. During the war I nearly cried my eyes out; have you forgotten that? I scraped lint; I wanted to go to the front as nurse--everything. What days they were! We _lived_ then. I sometimes think we have never lived since." Dallas felt a little bored. He was of the same age as Fanny Churchill; but the school-girl, whose feelings were already those of a woman, had had her nature stirred to its depths by events which the lad had been too young to take seriously to heart. His heart had never caught up with them, though, of course, his reason had. "Yes, I know you are flamingly patriotic," he said. "All the same, you don't want Eva to live in Fiftieth Street." "In Fiftieth Street?" "I chose the name at random. In New York." "I don't see why you should be sarcastic," said Fanny. "Of course I expect to go back myself some time; I could not be content without that. But Eva--Eva is different; she has been brought up over here entirely; she was only three when I came abroad. It seems such a pity that all that should be wasted." "And why should it be wasted in Fiftieth Street?" "The very qualities that are admired here would be a drawback to her there," replied Mrs. Churchill. "A shy girl who cannot laugh and talk with everybody, who has never been out alone a step in her life, where would she be in New York?--I ask you that. While here, as you see, before she is eighteen--" "Isn't the poor child eighteen yet? Why in the world do you want to marry her to any one for five years more at least?" Mrs. Churchill threw up her pretty hands. "How little you have learned about some things, Philip, in spite of your winters on the Nile and your Scotch shooting-box! I suppose it is because you have had no daughters to consider." "Daughters?--I should think not!" was Dallas's mental exclamation. Fanny, then, with all her sense, was going to make that same old mistake of supposing that a bachelor of thirty-seven and a mother of thirty-seven were of the same age.