ristled with statistics and
calculations to prove the soundness of his theory, gardeners to the
contrary notwithstanding. My father listened to him patiently, and
seemed to be amused. Aunt Helen sat apart with a reserved, patrician
air.

My two callers took their leave together; and when the front door
closed, my father said jocosely,--

"Who are your friends, Virginia? I hope they have not been persuading
you to invest in a fig farm."

I blushed, remembering my former design of speculating with Mr.
Dale,--of which, however, my father had no knowledge.

"Both are literary men of high reputation," I answered quietly, though I
had an instinctive feeling that my father would make sport of this
assertion. But experience had taught me that with him it was best to
call a spade a spade.

"That accounts for it. I thought the gentleman in velveteen had a screw
loose somewhere," he said as he passed out of the room.

"Well, Virginia," exclaimed Aunt Helen when we were alone, "whom _have_
you picked up now?"

"I don't understand you," said I.

"Who are those young men who were here just now? They are foreigners, on
their own admission,--Bohemians. My own belief is that they have gypsy
blood in their veins, for what can one know of the antecedents of
persons who come from a small German principality? They don't even claim
to be counts, and any one with the smallest pretext to respectability in
that part of the world is a count, at least. They look to me as if they
had been on the stage, especially the one to whom you were talking. I
will do him the justice to say he is a handsome wretch, but like all
those foreign adventurers he has a dissipated air. As for the other, he
is simply commonplace and vulgar, with little upstart radical notions."

I waited for her to finish before replying. "I have already said that
Mr. Spence and Mr. Barr are both literary men of high standing. They are
neither of them foreigners, but were born in this State. By 'Bohemian'
Mr. Spence meant the literary and artistic fraternity in general, Aunt
Helen. He is a philosopher as well as a poet; and Mr. Barr paints
pictures in addition to his other work."

"But who are they? Where do they come from? It is all very well to say
they were born in this country. But who and what are their parents?
Spence--Spence--I never heard the name in my life. There were some Barrs
who used to live in the next street to us when your mother and I were
young; but the