“Dan, I think Miss Pasmer is a beautiful girl, and I know we shall all like her, if you don’t set us against her by your arrogance.  Of course we don’t know anything about her yet, and you don’t, really; but she seems a very lovable little thing, and if she’s rather silent and undemonstrative, why, she’ll be all the better for you:  you’ve got demonstration enough for twenty.  And I think the family are well enough.  Mrs. Pasmer is thoroughly harmless; and Mr. Pasmer is a most dignified personage; his eyebrows alone are worth the price of admission.”  Dan could not help smiling.  “All that there is about it is, you mustn’t expect to drive people into raptures about them, and expect them to go grovelling round on their knees because you do.”

“Oh, I know I’m an infernal idiot,” said Dan, yielding to the mingled sarcasm and flattery.  “It’s because I’m so anxious; and you all seem so confoundedly provisional about it.  Eunice, what do you suppose father really thinks?”

Eunice seemed tempted to a relapse into her teasing, but she did not yield.  “Oh, father’s all right—­from your point of view.  He’s been ridiculous from the first; perhaps that’s the reason he doesn’t feel obliged to expatiate and expand a great deal at present.”

“Do you think so?” cried Dan, instantly adopting her as an ally.

“Well, if I sad so, oughtn’t it to be enough?”

“It depends upon what else you say.  Look here, now, Eunice!” Dan said, with a laughing mixture of fun and earnest, “what are you going to say to mother?  It’s no use, being disagreeable, is it?  Of course, I don’t contend for ideal perfection anywhere, and I don’t expect it.  But there isn’t anything experimental about this thing, and don’t you think we had better all make the best of it?”

“That sounds very impartial.”

“It is impartial.  I’m a purely disinterested spectator.”

“Oh, quite.”

“And don’t you suppose I understand Mr. and Mrs. Pasmer quite as well as you do?  All I say is that Alice is simply the noblest girl that ever breathed, and—­”

“Now you’re talking sense, Dan!”

“Well, what are you going to say when you get home, Eunice?  Come!”

“That we had better make the best of it.”

“And what else?”

“That you’re hopelessly infatuated; and that she will twist you round her finger.”

“Well?”

“But that you’ve had your own way so much, it will do you good to have somebody else’s a while.”

“I guess you’re pretty solid,” said Dan, after thinking it over for a moment.  “I don’t believe you’re going to make it hard for me, and I know you can make it just what you please.  But I want you to be frank with mother.  Of course I wish you felt about the whole affair just as I do, but if you’re right on the main question, I don’t care for the rest.  I’d rather mother would know just how you feel about it,” said Dan, with a sigh for the honesty which he felt to be not immediately attainable in his own case.