"I don't know anything at all about men," replies Esther, exhaustively. "No woman in the world can have a more limited acquaintance with the masculine gender than I have."
"You are young yet," says Brandon, consolingly.
"I was seventeen last May, if you call that young," she answers, her thoughts recurring to "Heartsease," the heroine of which is
"Wooed and married and a'"
before her sixteenth birthday.
"You are eight years younger than I am."
"Am I?" carelessly, as if such comparative statistics were profoundly uninteresting to her.
"Yes; I am glad there is so much difference in age between us."
"Why?"
"Because you are the more likely to outlive me."