"Can't you understand that that's exactly why I want to go there!"
Rhoda could understand it quite well, and relented. "But why this summer?"
"What summer, then?"
She was chastened. "Of course, it's pure selfishness, old top. I'm scared stiff at the thought of losing you forever, that's all."
"Who's romantic now!"
"Not I," she exclaimed with precocious bitterness. "I'm facing a fact which is so plain you can't even see it. You never do see them when they're plain,—only," she smiled indulgently, "when they're pretty. Mere man!"
"You envy me."
"You needn't rub it in."
They had arrived at the door of an ineffably decent little brick house with white pillars and clean, clean windows which gave a shine to the dark interior. "Tell my aunt it's me and Mr. Thanet," said Rhoda to the discreetly cheerful person who let them in.
"I," corrected Grover under his breath.
"You say me—often."
"Not to maids, in the Brothers Adam houses."
Miss Pearn was sitting up as precisely as a folding pocket-rule, regulating the flame under a silver kettle. She rustled when she moved, and peered above two pair of pince-nez, for she had been reading from a book called. The Threefold Discipline—as if she
