"Tea or cocoa?" asked Richard Norton, pointing his finger at tea-pot and jug in turn. I chose cocoa, I can't think why. "That's lucky," sighed Gabriel; "there's no tea in the bag." He made the cocoa, Jane Norton cut the bread; at last we sat down. I don't think I ever enjoyed a meal so much in my life. They ate voraciously, and we talked meanwhile in the silliest fashion, about nothing at all, laughing until the tears rolled down our cheeks. My friend is very funny, but his fun is of the kind that cannot bear repeating; taken away from himself, separated from his personality, it would sound merely foolish. You know what I mean. I sat next Miss Norton during tea. When we had done, Gabriel stood up, chair and all, and came beside me. "What do you think of us?" he asked. "Aren't we rather nice?" "Yes, indeed," I replied; "and the funny part of it is that I feel as though I'd known you all my life." "That's just how I feel with you," said Gabriel, and Richard Norton added,-- "I like you; you're a nice girl; you don't turn up your nose at us because we live in our own way. You're a nice girl." "I like your way of living," said I, then. "From what I can see, it seems to me you are about as free as any one can be in this world, and that is the best of all things,--freedom." "You've hit it!" cried Richard Norton, bringing his flat hand down on the table. "We are free!" "Now I'll tell you," said Gabriel. "This time last year we had horrible lodgings in Bloomsbury. Father went every day to drudgery in a dirty office, helping another man to rob his fellow-creatures; aunt there gave lessons,--she can't teach a bit; she was only putting nonsense into the heads of future men and women, and, such as it was, putting it there wrong. I was doing likewise, and I teach worse than she does. Of an evening I wrote drivel for the papers. We were, every one of us, useless and miserable. At last one day I said--" "You did!" interrupted his father. "You may live to be a hundred, you'll never say anything so wise again." "I said: 'Look here! How many lives have we?' 'One,' replied father. 'What are we alive for?' 'I don't know,' replied father. 'Neither do I; only I know that life's not worth living as we live it. Let's go into the country.'"