"Stop kicking Zip anywhere," he admonished her; "it's bad taste." "But if I don't speak out, I'll _bust_!" "Well, bust," he said, dryly; "that's better than kicking Zip." Her face broke into a grin, and she leaned over the gate to give his arm a squeeze. "I don't know how I'd get along without you," she told him. "Darn that pup!" she said, and dashed after Zip's trailing leash. Arthur Weston, looking after her, laughed, and waved his hand. "How young she is! Well, I'll put the office business through for her." CHAPTER III Somehow or other he did "put the office business through"; but the persuading of Mrs. Payton was a job of many days. So far as opinions went, he had to concede almost everything; of course Freddy's project was "absurd"; of course "girls didn't do such things" when Mrs. Payton was a young lady;--still, why not let Fred find out by experience how foolish her scheme of self-support was? "It mortifies me to death," Mrs. Payton moaned. "I don't like it myself," he admitted. "What does Mr. Maitland say to it?" "She says he says it's 'corking,'" Arthur Weston quoted; "I wish they would talk English! The smallness of their vocabulary is dreadfully stupid. They think it is smart to be laconic, but it's only boring. Do you think Fred cares about Maitland?" "I wish she did, but she isn't--human! Rather different from my girlhood days! Then, a girl liked to have beaux. One of my cousins had a set of spoons--she bought one whenever she had a proposal. I don't think Freddy has had a single offer. I tell her it's because she cheapens herself by being so familiar with the young men. Not an offer! But I don't believe she's at all mortified. Well, it's just part of the 'newness' of things. I dislike everything that is new! I wish Freddy would get married."... "Why," Mr. Weston pondered, as, having wrung a reluctant consent from Mrs. Payton, he closed the door of No. 15 behind him, "why do we consider marriage the universal panacea?" But whether he knew why or not, he believed it was a panacea, and even plotted awkwardly to administer it to Frederica. Maitland was just the man for her; a good fellow, straight and clean, and with money behind him. The worst of it was that he could not be counted on to discourage Fred's folly; indeed, he seemed immensely taken by all her schemes; the more preposterous she was, the more, apparently, he admired her. He was as full of half-baked ideas as Fred herself! But there was this difference between them: Howard did not give you the sense of being abnormal; he was only asinine. And every first-rate boy has to be an ass before he amounts to anything as a man. But Fred was not normal.