"It only comes back to saying how hard it is nowadays to marry one's daughters," said the lucid Mrs. Gosselin, saving Firminger, however, the trouble of an ingenious answer. "I don't contend that, at the best, it's easy." But Guy Firminger would not have struck you as capable of much conversational effort as he lounged there in the summer softness, with ironic familiarities, like one of the old friends who rarely deviate into sincerity. He was a robust but loose-limbed young man, with a well-shaped head and a face smooth, fair and kind. He was in knickerbockers, and his clothes, which had seen service, were composed of articles that didn't match. His laced boots were dusty--he had evidently walked a certain distance; an indication confirmed by the lingering, sociable way in which, in his basket-seat, he tilted himself towards Mary Gosselin. It pointed to a pleasant reason for a long walk. This young lady, of five-and-twenty, had black hair and blue eyes; a combination often associated with the effect of beauty. The beauty in this case, however, was dim and latent, not vulgarly obvious; and if her height and slenderness gave that impression of length of line which, as we know, is the fashion, Mary Gosselin had on the other hand too much expression to be generally admired. Every one thought her intellectual; a few of the most simple-minded even thought her plain. What Guy Firminger thought--or rather what he took for granted, for he was not built up on depths of reflection--will probably appear from this narrative. "Yes indeed; things have come to a pass that's awful for _us_" the girl announced. "For _us_, you mean," said Firminger. "We're hunted like the ostrich; we're trapped and stalked and run to earth. We go in fear--I assure you we do." "Are _you_ hunted, Guy?" Mrs. Gosselin asked with an inflection of her own. "Yes, Mrs. Gosselin, even _moi qui vous parle_, the ordinary male of commerce, inconceivable as it may appear. I know something about it." "And of whom do you go in fear?" Mary Gosselin took up an uncut book and a paper-knife which she had laid down on the advent of the other visitors. "My dear child, of Diana and her nymphs, of the spinster at large. She's always out with her rifle. And it isn't only that; you know there's always a second gun, a walking arsenal, at her heels. I forget, for the moment, who Diana's mother was, and the genealogy of the nymphs; but not only do the old ladies know the younger ones are out, they distinctly go _with_ them." "Who was Diana's mother, my dear?" Mrs. Gosselin inquired of her daughter. "She was a beautiful old lady with pink ribbons in her cap and a genius for knitting," the girl replied, cutting her book.