“I like being with you, of course,” she said to Alice. “You rest me and bring out the best there is in me, and when I see you washing those dreadful dinner dishes and skimming the milk and pouring tea and coffee for those sweaty men who come to the table in their shirt sleeves, I hate myself for the useless piece of pottery I am, and feel tempted to try the dairy maid business like you. If I had a little _chalet_ and a _petit Trianon_ like Marie Antoinette I’d do it. Truly, Alice, I don’t see how you endure it as you do, with nothing livelier to go to than a church social, where they play kissing games, but won’t let you dance, because it is wicked, and not a single man to flirt with. I am positively getting rusty for some male to wink at!” Alice laughed and replied, “I believe you’d flirt with the undertaker if you could get your eyes on him. Why, you have winked at every sweaty man on the farm, and there isn’t one of them who doesn’t brighten up the minute you appear in your stunning gowns, with your cheery good morning. There are men enough to flirt with, but not exactly your kind.” “Nor yours, either,” Helen rejoined. “Honestly, how are you ever to be married, unless I send you some of my cast-offs?” “Which one?” Alice asked, and Helen replied, “I really don’t know, there’s ——,” so and so, repeating their names; “but, I dare say, whichever one I made over to you I should want back again. I wrote you from Saratoga about Craig Mason, who didn’t care to call upon me. Do you know, I’m dying to see him. Something tells me _you_ would suit him to a dot, but it can’t be till I’ve met him in fair conflict and been defeated.”