"Years ago, my dear, the only way a girl could get her freedom or any male society was by marrying. Now, she gets as much of both as she wants, and if she marries she loses all the freedom and most of the male society. So why should she marry at all?"

Hughie kept silence before this poser. He felt incapable of plunging into the depths of an argument: one has to keep to the surface in discussing these matters with a maiden of twenty.

"So I shan't marry for years, if at all," continued Miss Gaymer, with the air of one propounding an entirely new theory. "Not until I'm getting _pa.s.see_ at any rate, and only then if I could find a man whom it wouldn't give me the creeps to think of spending the rest of my life with. Besides, the moment one gets engaged all the other men drop off,--all the nice ones, at any rate,--and that would never do. Don't you think my system is a sensible one?"

"It comes hard on the men," said Hughie.

"Yes, poor dears!" said Miss Gaymer sympathetically. "Still, one man is so tiresome and a lot is so nice!"

With which concise and not unmasterly summary of the marriage question, as viewed through the eyes of the modern maiden, Miss Gaymer turned the conversation into other channels, and the idyll terminated.

Half an hour later they were called into the house, to make ready for a boating expedition.

Joan, with her usual frankness, reverted for a moment before they left the seclusion of the trees to the topic that was uppermost in their minds.

"Hughie," she said softly, "does it hurt much?"

"I don't quite know yet," said Hughie.

"I mean, are you sad or angry--which? It usually takes a man one way or the other," observed this experienced damsel.

"I don't know that I'm either," said Hughie meditatively; "the only feeling that I have just now is that I'm desperately sorry. But I'm not kicking."

"It is my belief," remarked Miss Gaymer with sudden and pardonable asperity, "that you don't care for me in the least. Do you, now?"

They were a very honest and sincere couple, these. For a full minute they looked each other in the face, without speaking. Then Hughie said,--

"Joey, I simply don't know! I thought I did half an hour ago, and I'd have sworn it last night, when--"

He checked himself.

"When what?" asked Joan swiftly.

"Nothing," said Hughie. "That's rather beside the point now, isn't it?"

Joan, curiosity struggling with honesty, nodded reluctantly.

"Anyhow," continued Hughie, "I thought I did then, but I'm blessed if I know now. In fact," he added in a sudden burst of confidence, "sometimes I can't stand you at any price, Joey dear!"

"Ah!" said Miss Gaymer, nodding a wise head, "I see you don't know your own mind yet. But you _will_--one way or another--as soon as you get away from me."

A week later another interview took place between the pair, on the same spot.

"Business only this time, Joey!" said Hughie, with rather laborious cheerfulness.

"All right. Did you have a good time in town?" inquired Miss Gaymer, in the inevitable manner of women and Orientals, who dislike coming to the point in matters of business without a few decent preliminaries.

"Yes, thanks. I have been picking up old friends again, and generally settling down," said Hughie. "Got a flat, and a comic man-servant--Scotchman--introduce you some day. He--"

He plunged into a rather rambling description of John Alexander Goble.

He was evidently no more anxious to get to business than Joan.

At last Miss Gaymer inquired,--

"Well, Hughie, have you fixed up my affairs?"

"Yes," said Hughie slowly. "Do you want details?"

"Mercy, no! I don't know anything about business, and I don't believe you do either, Hughie. _Do_ you?"

"Not much," confessed the trustee. "However, I must tell you at once, Joey, that your income won't be nearly as large as I expected--"

"Right O!" replied Joan cheerfully. "When do I start for the workhouse?"

"It's not quite so bad as that," said Hughie, "but--"

"What am I worth?" inquired the practical Miss Gaymer.

"I can't quite tell you," said Hughie in a hesitating fashion. "You see"--he appeared to be choosing his words rather carefully--"the nominal value of investments, and their actual cash equivalent--"

Joan put her fingers in her ears.

"Stop!" she cried, "or I shall scream! I don't know an a.s.set from a liability, except that in the arithmetic book brokerage is one-eighth, and--Never mind! I should never understand. How much am I to have a year? Tell me that."

"Supposing it should be a mere trifle," said Hughie slowly, "what would you do?"

Miss Gaymer puckered her brow thoughtfully.

"You mean, if I hadn't enough to live on?"

Hughie nodded.

"Well, I shouldn't be a governess, I don't think. I love children, but children are always perfectly diabolical to their governess, and I shouldn't be able to stand their mothers, either. No: governesses are off! I shouldn't mind being a typewriter, though, or a secretary,--not that I can typewrite, or even spell,--provided it was to a really nice man. An author, you know, or a Cabinet Minister. He could walk about the room, rumpling up his hair and getting the stuff off his chest, and I would sit there like a little mouse, in a neat black skirt and a white silk blouse,--_perhaps_ one or two carnations pinned on,--looking very sweet and taking it all down."

"It's a pretty picture," said Hughie drily.

"Yes, isn't it?" said Miss Gaymer, with genuine enthusiasm. "I think,"

she continued, soaring to still greater heights, "that I should like to go on the stage best of all. Of course, it wouldn't be the slightest good my going on the proper stage--learning parts, and all that; but a piece like 'The Merry Widow,' with different frocks for each act and just a few choruses to sing in, would be top-hole! _Say_ I'm a pauper, Hughie!"

"You're not--thank G.o.d!" was Hughie's brutal but earnest response.

"All right, then! Don't bite my head off!" said Miss Gaymer, with unimpaired good temper. "Let us resume. How much are you going to give me?"

"How much can you live on?"

"Well, I was talking about it to Ursula Harbord--you know her, don't you?"