he good fortune to be engaged. "I
never could feel settled so far from you," he went on gallantly; "and I
want only so much home at hand as will keep me from daily discontent. So
it is exceedingly convenient to have my cousin Julia next door. I feel
as one might who lived over a grocery-shop: there would be no fear of
starving, at all events. When my supply of family feeling runs low, I
drop in upon Julia and lay in enough to last a few days. Her friend, who
makes a home with her, of whom I wrote in my last, does not greatly
interest me. She says very little; but I am willing to grant that she is
uncommonly pretty. I don't know why I say this in such grudging fashion.
If some one else be fair to me, what care I how fair this 't other one
be? Julia admires her greatly; but I suspect she is one of the kind whom
one needs to marry ever to get at. Julia is as much married to her as
one woman can be to another; and that explains why she sees so much in
her. She sometimes reports scraps of conversations which she has held
with this Miss Lillie Vila. Unless Julia makes up both sides of the
conversation, her friend certainly is intelligent, and, I am afraid,
witty. I say this last because it piques me that I have never extracted
any witty remark from her.

"As for John, he is imperturbably good-natured. His profession keeps him
away a good deal; but when he is at home he seems to do nothing but read
a book by the fireside and chuckle to himself. Julia and Miss Vila both
admire him greatly; but I suspect it is necessary to reconstruct him out
of imaginary material before one can get to think very highly of him.
Women do this naturally. I can always make myself humble by thinking
that you do it with me.

"Buckingham is decidedly more interesting. I have not seen him since the
evening I called upon him; but as I recall him, his air, his
conversation, and the shell of a room which he has been forming about
him, I constantly find something new to enjoy. He has a good deal of
insight. I am not uncomfortable when I remember how steadily he looked
at me; for he is not cynical. Indeed, I should say that he had managed
to preserve an unusual amount of sentiment,--more than is generally
found in one at his time of life. I am convinced that he ought to marry;
and if he ever does, I am sure that he will give up writing stories. He
is just one of those men who will find such satisfaction in domestic
life as to become indifferent to imaginat