ever saw anything
like it there."

"Why not?" said Lawrence. "I mean, why is there not anything like this
there?"

Then Dolly's face dimpled all up in one of its expressions of extreme
sense of fun.

"We are not old enough," she said. "You know when these trees were
young, our land was filled with the red men, and overgrown with
forests."

"Well, those forests were old."

"Yes, but in a forest trees do not grow like this. They cannot. And
then the forest had to be cut down."

"Then you like England better than America?"

"I never saw in my life anything half so beautiful as Brierley Park."

"You would be contented with such a home, wherever it might be?"

"As far as the trees went," said Dolly, with another ripple of fun
breaking over her face.

"Tell me," said Lawrence, "are all American girls like you?"

"In what way? We do not all look alike."

"No, no; I do not mean looks; they are no more like you in _that_, than
you say America resembles Brierley Park. But you are not like an
English girl."

"I am afraid that is not an equal compliment to me. But why should
Americans be different from English people? We went over from England
only a little while ago."

"Institutions?" Lawrence ventured.

"What, because we have a President, and you have a King? What
difference should that make?"

"Then you see no difference? Am I like an American, now?"

"You are not like my father, certainly. But I do not know any American
young men--except one. And I don't know him."

"That sounds very much like a riddle. Won't you be so good as to
explain?"

"There is no riddle," said Dolly. "I knew him when I was at school, a
little girl, and I have never seen him since."

"Then you don't know him now, I should say."

"No. And yet I feel as if I knew him. I should know him if we saw each
other again."

"Seems to have made a good deal of an impression!"

"Yes, I think he did. I liked him."

"Before you see him again you will have forgotten him," said Lawrence
comfortably. "Do you not think you could forget America, if somebody
would make you mistress of such a place as this?"

"And if everybody I loved was here? Perhaps," said Dolly, looking round
her at the soft swelling green turf over which the trees stretched
their great branches.

"But," said Lawrence, lying on his elbow and watching her, "would you
want _everybody_ you love? The Bible says that a woman shall leave
father and mother and cleave to her hus