completeness amused her, but she also divined the loneliness of such a
boyhood. To her great embarrassment, the tears rose in her eyes in quick
sympathy when she came to hear of the way he was treated in his childish
maladies.

"Poor little fellow!" she said softly, and, as she was obliged to drop the
white, thickly-fringed lids and fall to pleating her handkerchief
industriously, she felt rather than saw that he was looking at her
narrowly.

There was a moment's silence, and then Mr. Ramsay began talking again.
"You are very happy here, aren't you? You wouldn't like to leave it and go
away to India, or Egypt, or--or--England, or anywhere?" said this
particularly deep young man, and, without waiting for any answer, except
such as was afforded by her rosy silence, went on: "American girls do have
lots of fun, I see that. I am afraid they are too fond of flirting,
though. English girls don't get much of a chance at that, as girls. They
don't amount to much until they are married and get their own way."

"Why, they don't flirt after they are _married_, do they?" said Bijou, in
a horrified tone, her ideal of post-matrimonial conduct being the exact
opposite of the ante-matrimonial.

"Oh, don't they, just!" said Mr. Ramsay cheerfully. "You see, as girls
they are heavily handicapped. They can't do anything they like, or go
anywhere; it's awfully slow for them, poor things. And so they naturally
look forward to the time when they will get their liberty as well as a
husband. But the competition must be something awful. A fellow that has
got a fine property or money is regularly hunted down; and even a poor
devil like me has to be monstrous careful. Cowrie, of the Carbineers, who
has got sixty thousand a year, says that he can't go to certain houses,
for fear they may have a clergyman secreted about the place and will get
him spliced to the ugliest daughter before he can escape. Awfully clever
chap, Cowrie,--a match for any mamma in England, I can tell you. He is not
going to marry any woman but the one he wishes to marry. No more am I.
That's why I can't marry. I've got no money. The governor picked out a
young woman from Liverpool for me last year,--a brewer's daughter, with
pots of it,--and wanted me to make up to her."

"Oh, he did! What did you do about it?" asked Bijou, in a low voice.

"Well, you see, just then I was most awfully hard up, and couldn't afford
to break with the governor; and so--"

"I'd be ashamed to