LOVE IN IDLENESS.
CHAPTER I.
"I'm going to stay with the three Miss Miners at the Trehearnes' place," said Louis Lawrence, looking down into the blue water as he leaned over the rail of the Sappho, on the sunny side of the steamer. "They're taking care of Miss Trehearne while her mother is away at Karlsbad with Mr. Trehearne," he added, in further explanation.
"Yes," answered Professor Knowles, his companion. "Yes," he repeated vaguely, a moment later.
"It's fun for the three Miss Miners, having such a place all to themselves for the summer," continued young Lawrence. "It's less amusing for Miss Trehearne, I daresay. I suppose I'm asked to enliven things. It can't be exactly gay in their establishment."
"I don't know any of them," observed the Professor, who was a Boston man. "The probability is that I never shall. Who are the three Miss Miners, and who is Miss Trehearne?"
"Oh—you don't know them!" Lawrence's voice expressed his surprise that there should be any one who did not know the ladies in question. "Well—they're three old maids, you know."
"Excuse me, I don't know. Old maid is such a vague term. How old must a maid be, to be an old maid?"
"Oh—it isn't age that makes old maids. It's the absence of youth. They're born so."
"A pleasing paradox," remarked the Professor, his exaggerated jaw seeming to check the uneasy smile, as it attacked the gravity of his colourless thin lips.