“Well, I am sure that is our only mode of living. It is a good one, but rather limited at times. But won’t there be a jolly rejoicing in the fall! Suppose we should have a new dress all round at the same instant! Would it ruin the parish?”
“Not if we earned it ourselves, surely.”
“As we shall—keeping a hotel.” And she laughed.
Mamma favored the new dress. Fan went down to the store that afternoon and bought it, and Dick Fairlie insisted upon driving her home in the phaeton, telling her again and again how glad he was that she would go to the picnic.
“Why, there would be no lack of girls, Dick,” she said, gayly.
“But they are not like you.”
“And Wachusett would be very stupid and monotonous if all its girls were alike, or all its mountains.”
“But I can talk to you; and some of them I can not get on with at all. I don’t like smart women.”
“O, Dick! I always supposed you liked me on account of my smartness. If I had one virtue above another, I thought it was that.”
Dick blushed to the roots of his hair.