Charley was right. She was the girl to tackle him, if he was to be tackled at all; but Charley knew that better than the reader, who has had merely a glimpse or so of the irrepressible Alice in her relations with the subject of this Monograph. For Charley had, as mentioned in the last chapter, witnessed innumerable scenes between the two, which had caused him to wipe his eyes and look as though something hurt him; that being his way of laughing before he was married. This being a Monograph, however, I have not felt at liberty to place those scenes before the reader; for a Monograph is, if I understand the term, a paper rigidly confined to one subject; alien topics being admitted only as illustrations throwing light on the main theme. So that the monotony of this narrative, which a hasty reader might attribute to poverty of invention, is in fact due to my rigidly artistic adherence to the Unities. A Monograph I promised, and a Monograph this shall be. And the theme is _not_ Love. “Then why did you not say so at first?” I hear you ask, my Ah Yung Whack,—hear you say this in plain English, for in your day all other languages will be as dead as that of Cicero. I cannot blame you for asking the question, though the answer is ready. Because I should else have found no readers among my contemporaries. The readers—that is, the people of leisure—of my day are mostly women and preachers (the third sex usually having all they can do to take care of the other two), and neither will bite freely at any bait save Love. They will nibble at the hook, but a game rush—bait, hook, and all, at a gulp—that is elicited only by a novel. Love is the bait now. Three hundred years ago it was Hate, the ODIUM THEOLOGICUM. Three hundred years hence it will be—but I cannot guess what, and you will _know_, my almond-eyed boy,—almond-eyed and yellow of skin, though swearing by Shakespeare, and perhaps by Magna Charta and Habeas Corpus. If, indeed, in your day—but enough! and so fare thee well, Confucian of far Cathay! The piazza after breakfast, next morning. A bright, sunny day in the beginning of February, with a voluptuousness in the air hinting at the approach of spring. “How beautiful and sparkling the river looks!” said one of the girls. “And just to think,” she added, with a little stamp of her little foot, “we must bid farewell to it so soon!” “That reminds me,” said Alice, rising briskly from the rocking-chair, in which she reclined, drinking in the balmy air and bright talk in half-dozing silence. But the silence and half-closed eyes were those of pussy awaiting the appearance of Mistress Mouse.