Not that I mean to hurry, you know."

"It's pleasant, staying with the Kirbys, isn't it?" said Winthrop. He
was standing on a step below hers, leaning against the side of the house
in the shade.

"No," answered Garda, "it isn't; that is, it isn't so pleasant as
staying at home. I like my own hammock best, and Carlos Mateo is funnier
than any one I know. But by staying in town I can see more of Margaret,
and that is what I care for most; I don't know how I can endure it when
she goes away!"

"You had better persuade her not to go."

"But she must go, unless Mrs. Rutherford should take a fancy to stay,
which is not at all probable; Mrs. Rutherford couldn't get on without
Margaret one day."

"I think you exaggerate somewhat my aunt's dependence upon Mrs. Harold,"
observed Winthrop, after a pause.

"I was waiting to hear you say that. You are all curiously blind. Mrs.
Rutherford is so handsome that I like to be in the same room with her;
but that doesn't keep me from seeing how much has to be done for her
constantly, and in her own particular way, too, from important things
down to the smallest; and that the person who attends to it all, keeps
it all going, is--"

"Minerva Poindexter," suggested Winthrop.

"Is Margaret Harold; I cannot imagine how it is that you do not see it!
But you do not any of you comprehend her--comprehend how unselfish she
is, how self-sacrificing."

Winthrop's attention had wandered away from Garda's words. He did not
care for her opinion of Margaret Harold; it was not and could not be
important--the opinion of a peculiarly inexperienced young girl about a
woman ten years older than herself, a woman, too, whose most marked
characteristic, so he had always thought, was the reticence which kept
guard over all her words and actions. No, for Garda's opinions he did
not care; what attracted him, besides her beauty, was her wonderful
truthfulness, her grace and ease. "How indolent she is!" was his present
thought, while she talked on about Margaret, her eyes still watching the
sea. "On these old steps she has taken the one position that is
comfortable; yet she has managed to make it graceful as well; she finds
a perfect enjoyment in simply sitting here for a while in this soft air,
looking at the water, and so here she sits, without a thought of doing
anything else. At home, it would be the hammock and the crane; so little
suffices for her. But she enjoys her little more fully, she appreciates