uld need six hemispheres to
produce another pair of eyes as beautiful as hers."--"Yes," he said, "I
should be 'looking up' if I asked even a beggar-maid to marry me."

Maria Dolores' beautiful eyes became thoughtful as well as
compassionate.

"But men who are poor work and earn money," she said, on the tone that
young women adopt when the spirit moves them to preach to young men. And
when the spirit does move them to that, things may be looked upon as
having advanced an appreciable distance, the ball may be looked upon as
rolling.

"So I've heard," said John, his head in the clouds. "It must be dull
business."

Maria Dolores dimly smiled. "Do _you_ do no work?" she asked.

"I've never had time," said John. "I've been too busy enjoying life."

"Oh," said Maria Dolores, with the intonation of reproach.

"Yes," said he, "enjoying the Humour, the Romance, the Beauty of
it,--and combine the three together, make a chord of 'em, you get the
Divinity. Or, to take a lower plane, the world's a stage, and life's the
drama. I could never leave off watching and listening long enough to do
any work."

"But do you not wish to play a part in the drama, to be one of the
actors?" asked his gentle homilist. "Have you no ambition?"

"Not an atom," he easily confessed. "The part of spectator seems to me
by far the pleasantest. To sit in the stalls and watch the incredible
jumble-show, the reason-defying topsy-turvydom of it, the gorgeous,
squalid, tearful, and mirthful pageantry, the reckless inconsequences,
the flagrant impossibilities; to watch the Devil ramping up and down
like a hungry lion, and to hear the young-eyed cherubim choiring from
the skies: what better entertainment could the heart of man desire?"

"But are we here merely to be entertained?" she sweetly preached, while
John's blue eyes somewhat mischievously laughed, and he felt it hard
that he couldn't stop her rose-red mouth with kisses. "Aren't we here to
be, as the old-fashioned phrase goes, of use in the world? Besides, now
that you are in love, surely you will never sit down weakly, and say, 'I
am too poor to marry,' and so give up your love,--like your friend
Winthorpe indeed, but for ignoble instead of noble motives. Surely you
will set to work with determination, and earn money, and make it
possible to marry. Or else your love must be a very poor affair." And
her adorable little hands, as they lay ("like white lilies," thought
John) upon the pale-green fa