"Don't you think that would be nicer, Floyd?" she asked.
"For the girl to be rich, that she might make her husband rich? Some men would like that."
"But what do you think?"
A boy of nineteen is not so glib in speaking of marriage as a girl of fourteen, but I finally told her that I should not fancy the destiny of marrying a rich girl: then my imagination warmed, and I let her hear what my dream would be. She, the girl I loved, should be poor: very likely life would have been cruel to her, and she would have known cold and privation. What joy I should have in wrapping her in costly things, in setting off her beauty with ornaments appropriate and rare! What a light would shine in her eyes when I led her to the lovely house where we two were to dwell in Fairyland! Every duty in life should be taken from her: all she would have to do would be to grow more and more beautiful. I myself would be chief servant to this dainty little new-made queen, and not even the winds should be allowed to play too freely with her hair.
Helen looked at me pensively, and Mr. Floyd, who was writing in the corner, laughed a low amused laugh which reminded me for a moment of Mephistopheles.
"So you would like that?" mused Helen. "Do you know, I should not like it at all."
"Well, you will never be poor," I retorted, "and you will give your golden key to some man who wants to marry a princess. But, to tell the truth, Helen, I don't expect to marry anybody: I think it is great nonsense. Both Harry and I have made up our minds to be bachelors."
CHAPTER X.
I had not seen Georgy Lenox for four years when, the spring we graduated, she came to visit a cousin of her mother's in Boston, and we were all invited to an Easter-party at Mrs. Dwight's, the cards being brought to us by no less a person than Mr. Lenox himself. I was in my own room writing when I heard Harry's sweet voice calling, and I went out. Harry was, as usual, sitting on the table before his easel. It had been one of his guardian's regulations that he should not touch paints or canvas during his collegiate course, and until within the last few months he had obeyed orders, and only lately had taken to water-colors as a sort of negative course of action calculated to give him relaxation after the monotony of his unnatural deprivation, without infringing upon his uncle's injunctions. He was painting a girl in a flower-garden, and over his shoulder was gazing a shabby, jaunty, decayed-looking person, who was strangely foreign to my eyes, yet irresistibly familiar.
"Don't you remember Mr. Lenox?" asked Harry, staring at me. "Have you forgotten the pleasures of your boyhood, miserable ingrate? Have you no recollection of the big kite this benefactor of your youth made you, which dragged you down the hill and threw you into the ditch?"