"He always comes when Miss Freddy is here; I think he's taken with her."
"I wish I could think so! There is nothing I should like better," said Mrs. Payton, sighing. But the mere hope of such a thing roused her to ask Mr. Weston to dinner whenever she knew that Fred was coming home for the night. Miss Graham, getting wind of those dinners, gave him, one day, a cousinly thrust in the ribs:
"Tortoise! I do really believe you have some sense, after all!"
"I have sense enough to know that the race is off for the tortoise, when the hare decides not to run," he said, dryly; "but that's no reason why I shouldn't dine with Mrs. Payton."
Miss Eliza was spending the summer at The Laurels, and she had Freddy on her mind. She went over to Lakeville to see her several times, and always, with elaborate carelessness, said something in Arthur Weston's favor. But she had to admit that Fred was blind to the pursuit of the faithful tortoise.
"I love the child," she told her sister; "but, I declare, I could spank her! Just think what a husband dear Arthur would make!"
"What kind of a wife would she make?" Miss Mary retorted. "I don't think she would insure any man's happiness."
"The pitiful thing about her is that she has aged so," said Miss Graham.
That sense of lost youth touched her so much that she was quite out of patience with dear Arthur. "Haven't you any heart?" she scolded. "The girl is unhappy! Carry her off, and make her happy."
"I'm too old to turn kidnapper," he defended himself.