the new hotel he's going to build. It's to be very aesthetic, and it's
going to be called The Lion's Head Inn. There's to be a little theatre,
for amateur dramatics, which I could conduct, and for all sorts of
professional amusements. If you should ever come, Molly, I'm sure we
shall do our best to make you comfortable."

Mary Enderby would not let Bessie laugh upon her shoulder after she said
this. "Bessie Lynde," she said, severely, "if you have no regard for
yourself, you ought to have some regard for him. You may say you are not
encouraging him, and you may believe it--"

"Oh, I shouldn't say it if I didn't believe it," Bessie broke in, with a
mock air of seriousness.

"I must be going," said Mary, stiffly, and this time she succeeded in
getting to her feet.

Bessie laid hold of her again. "You think you've been trifled with,
don't you, dear?"

"No--"

"Yes, you do! Don't you try to be slippery, Molly. The plain pikestaff
is your style, morally speaking--if any one knows what a pikestaff is.
Well, now, listen! You're anxious about me."

"You know how I feel, Bessie," said Mary Enderby, looking her in the
eyes.

"Yes, I do," said Bessie. "The trouble is, I don't know how I feel. But
if I ever do, Molly, I'll tell you! Is that fair?"

"Yes."

"I'll give you ample warning. At the least little consciousness in the
region of the pericardium, off will go a note by a district messenger,
and when you come I'll do whatever you say. There!"

"Oh, Bessie!" cried her friend, and she threw her arms round her, "you
always were the most fascinating creature in the world!"

"Yes," said Bessie, "that's what I try to have him think."

XLII.

Toward the end of April most people who had places at the Shore were
mostly in them, but they came up to town on frequent errands, and had
one effect of evanescence with people who still remained in their Boston
houses provisionally, and seemed more than half absent. The Enderbys
had been at the Shore for a fortnight, and the Lyndes were going to be a
fortnight longer in Boston, yet, as Bessie made her friend observe, when
Mary, ran in for lunch, or stopped for a moment on her way to the train,
every few days, they were both of the same transitory quality.

"It might as well be I as you," Bessie said one day, "if we only think
so. It's all very weird, dear, and I'm not sure but it is you who sit
day after day at my lonely casement and watch the sparrows examining the
fu