“Ah, my dear, you think so now. Wait till another twenty years have passed over your heads, and then if you are both alive see which of you is the happiest. As for Florence, of course she would wish to be like Eva; of course it is painful for her to have to go about with a girl beside whom she looks like a little dowdy. I daresay that she would have been as glad if Eva had stopped in London as her cousins were that she left it. Dear, dear! I hope they won’t quarrel. Florence’s temper is dreadful when she quarrels.” This was a remark that Dorothy could not gainsay. She knew very well what Florence’s temper was like. “But, Mr. Jeremy,” went on the old lady, “all this must be stupid talk for you to listen to; tell me, have you been rowing any more races lately?” “No,” said Jeremy, “I strained a muscle in my arm in the ’Varsity Race, and it is not quite well yet.” “And where is my dear Ernest?” Like most women, of whatever age they might be, Miss Ceswick adored Ernest. “He is coming back on Monday week.” “O, then he will be in time for the Smythes’ lawn tennis party. I hear that they are going to give a dance after it. Do you dance, Mr. Jeremy?” Jeremy had to confess that he did not; indeed, as a matter of fact, no earthly power had ever been able to drag him inside a ballroom in his life. “That is a pity; there are so few young men in these parts. Florence counted them up the other day, and the proportion is one unmarried man, between the ages of twenty and forty-five, to every nine women between eighteen and thirty.” “Then only one girl in every nine can get married,” put in Dorothy, whose mind had a trick of following things to their conclusions. “And what becomes of the other eight?” asked Jeremy. “I suppose that they all grow into old maids like myself,” answered Miss Ceswick. Dorothy, again following the matter to its conclusion, reflected that in fifteen years or so there would, at the present rate of progression, be at least twenty-five old maids within a radius of three miles round Kesterwick. And, much oppressed by this thought, she rose to take her leave. “I know who won’t be left without a husband, unless men are greater stupids than I take them for—eh, Jeremy?” said the kindly old lady, giving Dorothy a kiss. “If you mean me,” answered Dorothy bluntly, with a slightly heightened colour, “I am not so vain as to think that anybody would care for an undersized creature whose only accomplishment is housekeeping; and I am sure it is not for anybody that I should care either.” “Ah, my dear, there are still a few men of sense in the world, who would rather get a _good_ woman as companion than a pretty face. Good-bye, my dear.”