They were generally curiously exotic, funny little creatures with odd manners and voices.

They were often most amusing, and one liked to hear them chatter and see the airy lightness with which they took superfluous, and sometimes unsuperfluous, conventions, as a hunter takes a five-barred gate.

But it never occurred to us to marry them.

We did not take them seriously enough.

But we began to marry them--we began to marry them, my good fellow!" The final words broke forth with such a suggestion of sudden anxiety that, in spite of himself, Westholt laughed involuntarily, and his father, turning to look at him, laughed also.