gently, "I am sure,
whenever you have a Sunday free like that, we should be only too glad if
you would consider us your friends--unless you think the place too
dreadfully tedious, as I'm afraid my cousin finds it."

"It is very kind of you--very," said he. "And I know the old doctor and
Mrs. Moore like to see me well enough, for I bring down their boy to
them; but if I came by myself, I'm afraid they wouldn't care to have an
idling, dawdling fellow like me lounging about the place of a Sunday
afternoon."

"Will you come and try, Mr. Mangan?" said she, quietly. "For Linn's sake
alone I know they would be delighted to have you here. And if it is rest
and quiet you want, can't we give you the garden and a book?"

"You mustn't put such visions before me," he said. "It's too good to be
true. I should be sighing for Paradise all through the week and
forgetting my work. And shouldn't I hate to wake up on Monday morning
and find myself in London!"

"You might wake up on Monday morning, and find yourself in Winstead,"
said she, "if you would take Linn's room for the night."

"Ah, no," he said, "it isn't for the like of me to try to take Linn's
place in any way whatever. He has always had everything--everything
seemed to come to him by natural right; and then he has always been such
a capital fellow, so modest and unaffected and generous, that nobody
could ever grudge him his good-fortune. Prince Fortunatus he always has
been."

"In what way, Mr. Mangan?" his companion asked, rather wonderingly.

"In every way. People are fond of him; he wins affection without trying
for it; as I say, it all comes to him as if by natural right."

"Yes, they say he is very popular in London, among those fine folk,"
observed Miss Francie, quite good-naturedly.

"Oh, I wasn't thinking of his fashionable friends," Mangan rejoined.
"Being made much of by those people doesn't seem to me one of the great
gifts of fortune. And yet I wonder it hasn't spoiled him. He doesn't
seem the least bit spoiled, does he?"

"Really, I see so little of him," Miss Francie said, with a smile, "he
honors us with so few visits, that I can hardly tell."

"No, he is not spoiled--you may take my word for it," her companion
said, with decision. And then he added, "I suppose he gets too much of
that petting; he is kept in such a turmoil of gayety that its evil
effects have no time to sink into him. He is too busy--as he said this
morning about marrying."

"What