d, but you
have not heart enough to be really thrilling."

"Still, even if I had a heart, it is possible I might not always wear it
on my sleeve for Miss Elisabeth Farringdon to peck at."

"Oh yes, you would; you couldn't help it. If you tried to hide it I
should see through your disguises. I have X rays in my eyes."

"Have you? They must be a great convenience."

"Well, at any rate, they keep me from making mistakes," Elisabeth
confessed.

"That is fortunate for you. It is a mistake to make mistakes."

"I remember our Dear Lady at Fox How once saying," continued the girl,
"that nothing is so good for keeping women from making mistakes as a
sense of humour."

"I wonder if she was right?"

"She was always right; and in that as in everything else. Have you never
noticed that it is not the women with a sense of humour who make fools
of themselves? They know better than to call a thing romantic which is
really ridiculous."

"Possibly; but they are sometimes in danger of calling a thing
ridiculous which is really romantic; and that also is a mistake."

"I suppose it is. I wonder which is worse--to think ridiculous things
romantic, or romantic things ridiculous? It is rather an interesting
point. Which do you think?"

"I don't know. I never thought about it."

"You never do think about things that really matter," exclaimed
Elisabeth, with reproof in her voice; "that is what makes you so
uninteresting to talk to. The fact is you are so wrapped up in that
tiresome old business that you never have time to attend to the deeper
things and the hidden meanings of life; but are growing into a regular
money-grubber."

"Perhaps so; but you will have the justice to admit it isn't my own
money that I am grubbing," replied Christopher, who had only reconciled
himself to giving up all his youthful ambitions and becoming
sub-manager of the Osierfield by the thought that he might thereby in
some roundabout way serve Elisabeth. Like other schoolboys he had
dreamed his dreams, and prospected wonderful roads to success which his
feet were destined never to tread; and at first he had asked something
more of life than the Osierfield was capable of offering him. But
finally he had submitted contentedly to the inevitable, because--in
spite of all his hopes and ambitions--his boyish love for Elisabeth held
him fast; and now his manly love for Elisabeth held him faster still.
But even the chains which love had rivetted are capable of