p of warm tea when his head was turned, and substituting
iced cherry-juice. Then the parson got up and ran after Violante, making
angry faces, and Violante dodged beautifully, till the parson,
fairly tired out, was too glad to cry "Peace," and come back to the
cherry-juice. Thus time rolled on, till they heard afar the stroke of
the distant church-clock, and Mr. Dale started up and cried, "But we
shall be too late for Leonard. Come, naughty little girl, get your
father his hat."

"And umbrella!" said Riccabocca, looking up at the cloudless, moonlit
sky.

"Umbrella against the stars?" asked the parson, laughing. "The stars
are no friends of mine," said Riccabocca, "and one never knows what may
happen!"

The philosopher and the parson walked on amicably.

"You have done me good," said Riccabocca, "but I hope I am not always
so unreasonably melancholic as you seem to suspect. The evenings will
sometimes appear long, and dull too, to a man whose thoughts on the past
are almost his sole companions."

"Sole companions?--your child?"

"She is so young."

"Your wife?"

"She is so--" the bland Italian appeared to check some disparaging
adjective, and mildly added, "so good, I allow; but you must own that
she and I cannot have much in common."

"I own nothing of the sort. You have your house and your interests, your
happiness and your lives, in common. We men are so exacting, we expect
to find ideal nymphs and goddesses when we condescend to marry a mortal;
and if we did, our chickens would be boiled to rags, and our mutton come
up as cold as a stone."

"Per Bacco, you are an oracle," said Riccabocca, laughing. "But I am
not so sceptical as you are. I honour the fair sex too much. There are
a great many women who realize the ideal of men, to be found in--the
poets!"

"There's my dear Mrs. Dale," resumed the parson, not heeding the
sarcastic compliment to the sex, but sinking his voice into a whisper,
and looking round cautiously,--"there's my dear Mrs. Dale, the best
woman in the world,--an angel I would say, if the word were not profane;
BUT--"

"What's the BUT?" asked the doctor, demurely.

"BUT I too might say that 'she and I have not much in common,' if I were
only to compare mind to mind, and when my poor Carry says something less
profound than Madame de Stael might have said, smile on her in contempt
from the elevation of logic and Latin. Yet when I remember all the
little sorrows and joys that we have sh