But I held fast, and every now and then I brought her up to the point again, gently but firmly, and now I think I know all I want to know about the interesting stranger.' 'My ideas about him are not many,' said Agnes, rubbing her cheek gently up and down the purring cat, 'and there doesn't seem to be much order in them.

He is very accomplished--a teetotaller--he has been to the Holy Land, and his hair has been out close after a fever.

It sounds odd, but I am not curious.

I can very well wait till to-morrow evening.' 'Oh, well, as to ideas about a person, one doesn't got that sort of thing from Mrs.Thornburgh.But I know how old he is, where he went to college, where his mother lives, a certain number of his mother's peculiarities which seem to be Irish and curious, where his living is, how much it is worth, likewise the color of his eyes, as near as Mrs.
Thornburgh can get.' 'What a start you have been getting!' said Agnes lazily.

'But what is it makes the poor old thing so excited ?' Rose sat up and began to fling the fir-cones lying about her at a distant mark with an energy worthy of her physical perfections and the aesthetic freedom of her attire.
'Because, my dear, Mrs.Thornburgh at the present moment is always seeing herself as the conspirator sitting match in hand before a mine.
Mr.Elsmere is the match--we are the mine.' Agnes looked at her sister, and they both laughed, the bright rippling laugh of young women perfectly aware of their own value, and in no hurry to force an estimate of it on the male world.
'Well,' said Rose deliberately, her delicate cheek flushed with her gymnastics, her eyes sparkling, 'there is no saying.