“Mr. Lawrence is a model of all the virtues, I admit! But, Nora, I confess I am jealous of him. Does he expect to educate you forever? You seem to me to have already all the learning a pretty woman needs. What does he know about women? What does he expect to do with you two or three years hence? Two or three years hence you will be number one.” And Fenton began to whistle with vehement gayety, executing with shuffling feet a momentary fandango. “Two or three years hence, when you look in the glass, remember I said so!” “He means to go to Europe one of these days,” said Nora, irrelevantly. “One of these days! One would think he expects to keep you forever. Not if I can help it. And why Europe, in the name of all that’s patriotic? Europe be hanged! You ought to come out to your own section of the country, and see your own people. I can introduce you to the best society in St. Louis. I’ll tell you what, my dear. You don’t know it, but you’re a regular Western girl.” A certain foolish gladness in being the creature thus denominated prompted Nora to a gush of momentary laughter, of which Roger, within the window, caught the soundless ripple. “You ought to know, George,” she said, “you are Western enough yourself.” “Of course I am. I glory in it. It’s the only place for a man of ideas! In the West you can do something! Round here you’re all stuck fast in ten feet of varnish. For yourself, Nora, at bottom you’re all right; but superficially you’re just a trifle overstarched. But we’ll take it out of you! It comes of living with a stiff-necked—” Nora bent for a moment her lustrous eyes on the young man, as if to recall him to order. “I beg you to understand, once for all,” she said, “that I refuse to listen to disrespectful allusions to Roger.” “I’ll say it again, just to make you look at me so. If I ever fall in love with you, it will be when you are scolding me. All I have got to do is to attack your papa—” “He is not my papa. I have had one papa; that’s enough. I say it in all respect.” “If he is not your papa, what is he? He is a dog in the manger. He must be either one thing or the other. When you are very little older, you will understand that.” “He may be whatever thing you please. I shall be but one,—his best friend.” Fenton laughed with a kind of fierce hilarity. “You are so innocent, my dear, that one doesn’t know where to take you. Do you expect to marry him?” Nora stopped in the path, with her eyes on her cousin. For a moment he was half confounded by their startled severity and the flush of pain in her cheek. “Marry Roger!” she said, with great gravity. “Why, he’s a man, after all!” Nora was silent a moment; and then with a certain forced levity, walking on: “I had better wait till I am asked.” “He will ask you! You will see.” “If he does, I shall be surprised.” “You will pretend to be. Women always do.”