But by the time he had sent a despatch or two, and called Jim Jackson up a second time to decide some detail, he knew that shooting would not help him much. The nag had settled itself: he had accepted the revelation that he was "interested" in Freddy Payton. With the contrast between the pain of the old wound and the new, he would not use the word "love," but "interest" committed him to an affection, tender almost to poignancy. Of course there was nothing to do about it. He must just take his medicine, as Fred took hers, "without making faces." There was nothing to strive for, nothing to avoid, nothing to expect. She was as good as engaged to Howard Maitland, and it would be a very sensible and desirable match;--to marry a man of forty-six would be neither sensible nor desirable! No; the only thing left to her trustee was to take every care of her that her eccentricities would permit, guard her, play with her, and correct her appalling taste. "Lord! what bad taste she has!" Also, while he and Jackson were wading about on the marshes for the next week, kick some sense into himself! That very evening, dropping in to the Misses Graham's and partaking of a bleakly feminine meal, he laid his lance in rest for her. Miss Mary was full of flurried apologies at the meagerness of the supper-table, but old Miss Eliza said, with spirit, that bread and milk would be good for him! "Now, tell us about that child, Arthur," she commanded. "You mean Fred Payton, I suppose?" he said, raising an annoyed eyebrow. "I don't call her a 'child.'" "You are quite right," Miss Mary agreed, in her little neutral voice; "she is certainly old enough to know how to behave herself." "It's merely that she wants to reform the world," Miss Eliza said, soothingly. "Reformers have no humor, and, of course, no taste;--or else they wouldn't be reformers!" "Your dear cousin Eliza is too kind-hearted," Miss Mary said; but her own kind, if conventional, heart made her listen sympathetically enough to the visitor's excusing recital of the hardships of Fred's life. Once, she interrupted him by saying that it was, of course, painful--the afflicted brother. And once she said she hoped that Miss Payton was a comfort to her mother--"though I don't see how she can be, off every day at what she calls her 'office'--a word only to be applied, it seems to me, to places where gentlemen conduct their business. When I was young, Arthur, a girl's first duty was in her home." "Perhaps there is nothing for her to do at home," Miss Eliza said. "There is always something to do, in every properly conducted household. Let her dust the china-closet." "I'd as soon put a tornado into a china-closet as that girl! She ought to be turning a windmill," Miss Eliza said. Her cousin gave her a grateful look, but the other lady was very serious. "I thought her manner to her grandmother most unpleasant. Youth should respect Age--" "Not unless Age deserves respect!" cried Miss Eliza, tossing her old head.