"My dear child," he answered, in a benevolent manner, "you have
disappointed me, because I have discovered that you resemble the rest of
your sex."

"Ah!" she remarked, maintaining a noncommittal attitude.

"Yes," continued Hollanden, with a sad but kindly smile, "even you,
Grace, were not above fooling with the affections of a poor country
swain, until he don't know his ear from the tooth he had pulled two
years ago."

She laughed. "He would be furious if he heard you call him a country
swain."

"Who would?" said Hollanden.

"Why, the country swain, of course," she rejoined.

Hollanden seemed plunged in mournful reflection again. "Well, it's a
shame, Grace, anyhow," he observed, wagging his head dolefully. "It's a
howling, wicked shame."

"Hollie, you have no brains at all," she said, "despite your opinion."

"No," he replied ironically, "not a bit."

"Well, you haven't, you know, Hollie."

"At any rate," he said in an angry voice, "I have some comprehension and
sympathy for the feelings of others."

"Have you?" she asked. "How do you mean, Hollie? Do you mean you have
feeling for them in their various sorrows? Or do you mean that you
understand their minds?"

Hollanden ponderously began, "There have been people who have not
questioned my ability to----"

"Oh, then, you mean that you both feel for them in their sorrows and
comprehend the machinery of their minds. Well, let me tell you that in
regard to the last thing you are wrong. You know nothing of anyone's
mind. You know less about human nature than anybody I have met."

Hollanden looked at her in artless astonishment. He said, "Now, I wonder
what made you say that?" This interrogation did not seem to be addressed
to her, but was evidently a statement to himself of a problem. He
meditated for some moments. Eventually he said, "I suppose you mean that
I do not understand you?"

"Why do you suppose I mean that?"

"That's what a person usually means when he--or she--charges another
with not understanding the entire world."

"Well, at any rate, it is not what I mean at all," she said. "I mean
that you habitually blunder about other people's affairs, in the belief,
I imagine, that you are a great philanthropist, when you are only making
an extraordinary exhibition of yourself."

"The dev----" began Hollanden. Afterward he said, "Now, I wonder what
in blue thunder you mean this time?"

"Mean this time? My meaning is very plain, Hollie. I supp