"Now tell me," said Marjorie Schuyler, "where have you been all these weeks?"
Patsy considered. "Well--I've been taking up hospital training."
"Oh, how splendid! Are you going over with the new Red Cross supply?"
Patsy shook her head. "You see, they only kept me until they had demonstrated all they knew about lung disorders--and fresh-air treatment, and then they dismissed me. I'm fearsome they were after finding out I hadn't the making of a nurse."
"That's too bad! What are you going to do now?"
An amused little smile twitched at the corners of Patsy's mouth; it acted as if it wanted to run loose all over her face. "Sure, I haven't my mind made--quite. And yourself?"
"Oh--I?" Marjorie Schuyler leaned forward a trifle. "Did you know I was engaged?"
"Betrothed? Holy Saint Bridget bless ye!" And the vagabond gloves clasped the slender hands of the American prototype and gave them a hard little squeeze. "Who's himself?"
"It's Billy Burgeman, son of _the_ Burgeman."
"It has fitted him years enough." Patsy's face sobered. "Oh, why does money always have to mate with money? Why couldn't you have married a poor great man--a poet, a painter, a thinker, a dreamer--some one who ought not to be bound down by his heels to the earth for bread-gathering or shelter-building? You could have cut the thongs and sent him soaring--given the world another 'Prometheus Unbound.' As for Billy Burgeman--he could have married--me," and Patsy spread her hands in mock petition.
Marjorie Schuyler laughed. "You! That is too beautifully delicious! Why, Patsy O'Connell, William Burgeman is the most conventional young gentleman I have ever met in my life. You would shock him into a semi-comatose condition in an afternoon--and, pray, what would you do with him?"
"Sure, I'd make a man of him, that's what. His father's son might need it, I'm thinking."
Marjorie Schuyler's face became perfectly blank for a second, then she leaned against the baronial arms on the back of her seat, tilted her head, and mused aloud: "I wonder just what Billy Burgeman does lack? Sometimes I've wondered if it was not having a mother, or growing up without brothers or sisters, or living all alone with his father in that great, gloomy, walled-in, half-closed house. It is not a lack of manhood--I'm sure of that; and it's not lack of caring, for he can care a lot about some things. But what is it? I would give a great deal to know."