ace; but after being
attractively plotted and laid out with streets and sidewalks, it allured
no one to build on it except the birds and the chipmonks, and he came
back to New York, where his daughter had remained in school.

One of her maternal aunts made her a coming-out tea, after she left
school; and she entered upon a series of dinners, dances, theatre
parties, and receptions of all kinds; but the tide of fairy gold pouring
through her fingers left no engagement-ring on them. She had no duties,
but she seldom got out of humor with her pleasures; she had some odd
tastes of her own, and in a society where none but the most serious books
were ever seriously mentioned she was rather fond of good ones, and had
romantic ideas of a life that she vaguely called bohemian. Her character
was never tested by anything more trying than the fear that her father
might take her abroad to live; he had taken her abroad several times for
the summer.

The dreaded trial did not approach for several years after she had ceased
to be a bud; and then it came when her father was again willing to serve
his country in diplomacy, either at the Hague, or at Brussels, or even at
Berne. Reasons of political geography prevented his appointment anywhere,
but General Triscoe having arranged his affairs for going abroad on the
mission he had expected, decided to go without it. He was really very fit
for both of the offices he had sought, and so far as a man can deserve
public place by public service, he had deserved it. His pessimism was
uncommonly well grounded, and if it did not go very deep, it might well
have reached the bottom of his nature.

His daughter had begun to divine him at the early age when parents
suppose themselves still to be mysteries to their children. She did not
think it necessary ever to explain him to others; perhaps she would not
have found it possible; and now after she parted from Mrs. Eltwin and
went to sit down beside Mrs. March she did not refer to her father. She
said how sweet she had found the old lady from Ohio; and what sort of
place did Mrs. March suppose it was where Mrs. Eltwin lived? They seemed
to have everything there, like any place. She had wanted to ask Mrs.
Eltwin if they sat on their steps; but she had not quite dared.

Burnamy came by, slowly, and at Mrs. March's suggestion he took one of
the chairs on her other side, to help her and Miss Triscoe look at the
Channel Islands and watch the approach of th