n of Pauline, regeneration in the matter of
footgear, I mean, and to wear good boots did her character no harm, nor
the pocket of the country shoemaker either, I am sure. Good boots could
not turn her feet from the pathway of truth and goodness which from her
earliest childhood she had set out to tread, never pausing except to
pick up some one who lagged behind, or to help some one who had strayed
from the path.

Dick Dudley, whose pathway through life had zigzagged considerably, was
astonished to find how easy the pathway was to keep, guided by Pauline,
and how alluring the goal of goodness. He gave himself up gladly to her
guidance, and was touched to find how much there was of latent goodness
in him. He had never before realized, that was all, how much he loved
his fellow-creatures, how he longed to help them all, how the conditions
of the laboring-classes made his blood boil with indignation, how he
idolized babies, loved old women, reverenced old men.

It was all a revelation to him. It was, moreover, delightful to be told
by Pauline how wonderful she found all these things in him, and how
unexpected. This, she explained, was nothing personal. "But I often
wondered if I should ever meet a man like you."

"Darling," he answered humbly, "I don't think I am that sort of man;
really, I'm awfully and frightfully ordinary."

Then Pauline, to prove the contrary, would ask him if he didn't feel
this or that or the other? And of course he could truthfully say he did,
because he felt all and everything Pauline wished him to feel, with her
beautiful eyes fixed upon him and the flush of enthusiasm on her
cheeks. Here was something to inspire a man, this splendidly generous,
magnanimous creature. Of course he had always felt all these things; he
had been groping after goodness. It was the goodness in Diana, and he
was kind enough to say in the professional aunt, which had appealed to
him. He had been feeling after, it for years, but it was only Pauline
who had revealed it to him, in himself. Well, he was very much in love.
Most men engaged to charming girls feel their own unworthiness, and
the girl is sweetly content that they should do so. Not so Pauline. She
revealed to her astonished lover a depth of goodness in his character
that he had least suspected, and he gradually began to feel how little
he had been understood.

Now this is an excellent basis on which to start an engagement. I forget
exactly how and when they be