"If Molly's modest at all," he maturely observed, "she makes the point, I judge, that she's passionately so; whatever that may mean, she's welcome to the comfort. But _I_ make the point," he said with increasing weight, "that my sister Nan, sweet Nan as you properly name her, fits on the other cap--the more becoming, as I understand it, to any young woman." "Sweet Nan, he wants you to understand," Molly intervened on this, "is a shrinking flower of the field, whereas I'm no better than one of the bedraggled!" "I see, I see"--our hero jumped to the vision: "you're the one infinitely talked about, as how shouldn't you be? But your sister has her virtue." "Her virtue, Lord bless us," Mrs. Midmore took him up: "why I hope to heaven she has, with so little to speak of else; though she'll be glad, no doubt, cousin, to know that you answer for it!" "Oh there are all kinds of virtue!" Ralph still laughed in his harmonising way--which his hostess, however, on that article, wouldn't have too much of. "I never heard of but one kind, which is quite enough. Thank you for putting on us more!" And she wished to know of her son what possessed him to make such claims. "If we work you up so about the child," she inquired of Ralph as well, "how shall you not be disappointed?--let her have as she will for you the making of a brave little sister." "Oh but I can imagine nothing better than a little sister to match the bravery of the rest of you, the brave little brother and the brave little bride, walking all three in the steps of the brave great mother--since you're so good, madam, as to become in some degree mine too. I'm sure," our young man declared, "that all Perry wants is to fit to our shy sister that other cap of Molly's--which one is it, my dear?" he asked directly of this young woman; and then before she could say: "Oh yes, the pale passion of modesty, which you won't let _me_ fall back on: for the want, I mean, of a better one among ourselves at home." "How do you know Nan's shy?" the girl demanded straight; "for it can't be as if you knew by being so yourself! Can't you understand," Molly pursued, "that the man of my taste _has_ only to be as bold as a lion and to think of nothing less?" "Well, I don't of course know that she's shy--that is I _didn't_; though I was guided so well by my apprehension of yourself. Yes"--and he looked about at them with the fairly musing gravity of this recognition--"I shouldn't much mind, you see, if I didn't fairly seem so to miss it!" "Miss _what_, sir, in the name of goodness?" Molly asked with impatience; "when you pull a face as long as if you were missing your purse! You don't suspect us, I hope, of hugging you to rifle your pockets!"