"One is," responded Rita.
"Which one?" he asked.
"Mr. Little."
"And the other—Mr. Bright—is he young?" asked the inquisitive Bostonian. There was no need for Rita to answer in words. The color in her cheeks and the radiance of her eyes told plainly enough that Mr. Bright was young. But she replied with a poor assumption of indifference:—
"I think he is nearly five years older than I." There was another betrayal of an interesting fact. She measured his age by hers.
"And that would make him—?" queried Williams.
"Twenty-two—nearly."
"Are you but seventeen?" he asked. Rita nodded her head and answered:—
"Shamefully young, isn't it? I used to be sensitive about my extreme youth and am still a little so, but—but it can't be helped." Williams laughed, and thought he had never met so charming a girl.
"Yes," he answered, "it is more or less a disgrace to be so young, but it is a fault easily overlooked." He paused for a moment while he inspected the heavens, and continued, still studying astronomy: "I mean it is not easily overlooked in some cases. Sometimes it is 'a monster of such awful mien' that one wishes to jump clear over the enduring and the pitying, and longs to embrace."