They were speaking of the street actor, whose name was Basil Kindred.
"And Minnie is very pretty, you say."
"Very pretty, but with such strange ways, Dan, as I have told you before."
"Yes," said Dan, looking earnestly at Joshua.
"Sometimes like a woman, which she is not; sometimes like a little child, which she is not. Yet for all she is so strange, one can't help loving her, and pitying her."
"Is she at all like Ellen, Jo?"
"Minnie is not like Ellen," said Joshua, considering. "Ellen's face is calm and peaceful; Minnie's is grander, larger. Minnie is the kind of girl for a heroine, and Ellen is not, I think. She is too peaceful. Say that Ellen is like a lake, Minnie is like the sea."
A quiet smile passed over Dan's lips, yet a regretful one, too.
"You don't know Ellen, Jo," he said "Give me the lake."
"And me the sea," said Joshua, not meaning it at all with reference to the girls, but literally, with reference to his choice of a profession.