"Thank you," said Lawrence, "I shall be obliged to you if you will be kind enough to bring me that one." He was glad for her to go away, even for a little time, that he might think. The smart of the disappointment caused by the non-appearance of Miss March was beginning to subside a little. Looking at it more quietly and reasonably, he could see that, in her position, it would be actually unmaidenly for her to come to him by herself. It was altogether another thing for this other girl, and, therefore, perhaps it was quite proper to send her. But, in spite of whatever reasonableness there might have been in it, he chafed under this propriety. It would have been far better, he thought, if she had come and told him that she could not possibly accept him, and that nothing more must be said about it. But then he did not believe, if she had given him time to say the words he wished to say, that she would have come to such a decision; and as he called up her lovely face and figure, as it stood framed in the open doorway, with a background of the sunlit arbor and fields, the gorgeous distant foliage, with the blue sky and its white clouds and circling birds, he thought of the rapture and ecstasy which would have come to him, if she had listened to his words, and had given him but a smile of encouragement. But here came Mrs Null, with a fat brown book in her hand. "One of the funniest things," she said, as she came to the door, "is Mr Salmon's chapter on paradoxes. He thinks it would be quite improper to issue a book of this kind without alluding to geographical paradoxes. Listen to this one." And then she read to him the elucidation of the apparent paradox that there is a certain place in this world where the wind always blows from the south; and another explaining the statement that in certain cannibal islands the people eat themselves. "There is something he says about Virginia," said she, turning over the pages, "which I want you to be sure to read." "Won't you sit down," said Lawrence, "and read to me some of those extracts? You know just where to find them." "That chair wasn't put there for me," said Miss Annie, with a smile. "Nonsense," said Lawrence. "Won't you please sit down? I ought to have asked you before. Perhaps it is too cool for you, out there."