“What a romance! How could you think of such a clever answer, right on the spur of the moment, too? But I always said you were the bright one of the family, Kate. Perhaps one’s mind works better in the cold, anyway. But I think he _might_ have knelt down. You should have put him close to the register. I daresay the cold stiffened his joints.” “Will you ever be serious, child?” Ethel took her sister’s head in her hands and turned it gently, so that she might look into the other’s face. “Is it possible that _you_ are serious, Kate?” she asked, in tender wonderment. The elder girl laughed, and lifted herself to sit on the sofa beside Ethel. “No, no; of course it isn’t possible,” she said, and put her arm about the invalid’s slender waist. “But he’s great fun to talk to. I chaffed him to my heart’s content, and he saw what I meant, every time, and didn’t mind in the least, and gave me as good as I sent. It’s such a relief to find somebody you can say saucy things to, and be quite sure they understand them. I began by disliking him--and he _is_ as conceited as a popinjay--but then he comprehended everything so perfectly, and talked so well, that positively I found myself enjoying it. And he knew his own mind, too, and was resolved to say nice things to me, and said them, whether I liked or not.” “But _did_ you ‘like,’ Kate?” “No-o, I think not,” the girl replied, musingly. “But, all the same, there was a kind of satisfaction in hearing them, don’t you know.” The younger girl drew her sister’s head down to her shoulder, and caressed it with her thin, white fingers. “You are not going to let your mind drift into anything foolish, Kate?” she said, with a quaver of anxiety in her tone. “You don’t know the man. You don’t even like him. You told me so, even from what you saw of him on the train coming from New York. You said he patronized everybody and everything, and didn’t have a good word to say for any one. Don’t you know you did? And those first impressions are always nearest the truth.” This recalled something to Kate’s mind. “You are right, puss,” she said. “It _is_ a failing of his. He spoke to-day almost contemptuously of his partner--that Mr. Tracy whom I met in the milliner’s shop; and that annoyed me at the time, for I liked Mr. Tracy’s looks and talk very much indeed, _I_ shouldn’t call him uncouth, at all.” “That was that Boyce man’s word, was it?” commented Ethel. “Well, then, I think that beside his partner, he is a pretentious, disagreeable monkey--there!” Kate smiled at her sister’s vehemence. “At least it is an unprejudiced judgment,” she said. “You don’t know either of them.” “But I’ve seen them both,” replied Ethel, conclusively. CHAPTER XX.--THE MAN FROM NEW YORK.