hat I can't
understand is, Miss Axewright seemed to hate it, too."

Mr. Ellett appeared greatly edified. "Did _you_ notice that?"

"I think I did."

"Well, now I'll tell you just what I think. There aren't any two girls
in the world that like each other better than those two. But that shows
just how it is. Girls are terribly jealous, the best of them. There
isn't a girl living that really likes to have another girl praised by a
man, or anything about her, I don't care who the man is. It's a fact,
whether you believe it or not, or whether you respect it. I don't
respect it myself. It's narrow-minded. I don't deny it: they _are_
narrow-minded. All the same, we can't _help_ ourselves. At least, _I_
can't."

Mr. Ellett broke into a laugh of exhaustive intelligence and clapped
Gaites on the back.

IX.

Gaites, if he did not wholly accept Ellett's philosophy of the female
nature, acted in the light it cast upon the present situation. From that
time till the end of his stay at Lower Merritt, which proved to be
coeval with the close of the Inn for the season, and with the retirement
of the orchestra from duty, he said nothing more of Miss Phyllis
Desmond's beautiful name. He went further, and altogether silenced
himself concerning his pursuit of her piano; he even sought occasions of
being silent concerning her piano in every way, or so it seemed to him,
in his anxious avoidance of the topic. In all this matter he was
governed a good deal by the advice of Mr. Ellett, to whom he had
confessed his pursuit of Miss Desmond's piano in all its particulars,
and who showed a highly humorous appreciation of the facts. He was a
sort of second (he preferred to say second-hand) cousin of Miss Desmond,
and, so far as he could make out, had been born engaged to her; and he
showed an intuition in the gingerly handling of her rather uncertain
temper which augured well for his future happiness. His future happiness
seemed to be otherwise taken care of, for though he was a young man of
no particular prospects, and no profession whatever, he had a generous
willingness to liberate his affianced to an artistic career; or, at
least, there was no talk of her giving up her scheme of teaching the
piano-forte because she was engaged to be married, he was exactly fitted
to become the husband of a wage-earning wife, and was so far from being
offensive in this quality that everybody (including Miss Desmond, rather
fitfully) liked him; and he was