"I wish for my sake, Gertrude, you would go into society. I can not but think you would form new ties that would brighten life. As a woman, you can not be insensible to your attractive power."
"I have no desire to exert it," replied Gertrude; "there are undoubtedly men in want of housekeepers, and plenty of widowers in want of nurses for their children. My desires do not point that way."
"You are incorrigible, Gertrude. Do you suppose there is no man who has sense enough to love you for yourself alone?"
"What if I do not want to be loved?" asked his sister.
"But you do," persisted John; "so long as there is any vitality in a women, she likes to be loved."
"Well, then, granting your proposition for the sake of the argument, please give me credit for a most martyr-like and persistent self-denial," said Gertrude, laughing.
"I will give you credit for nothing, till your heart gets thawed out a little; and I think I know a friend of mine who can do it."
"Rose, you are not looking well, this morning. Confess, now, that you did not sleep a wink last night. I heard the pattering of your little feet over my head long after midnight."
"Very likely, for I was unaccountably restless. I will tell you what troubled me. I was trying to think of some way to support myself; I wish I had a tithe of your energy, Gertrude."
"Well you have not, you are just made to be loved and petted. You are too delicate a bit of porcelain to be knocked and hustled round amid the delf of the world. Your gift is decidedly wife-wise, and the sooner you let my good brother John make you one, the better for all of us."
"What do you think of my turning authoress?" asked Rose, adroitly turning the subject.
"Oh, do it, by all means," mocked Gertrude, "it is the easiest thing in the world to write a book. It would be just the thing for a little sensitive-plant like you. I think I see it fairly launched. I think I see you sit down with the morning paper in your hand to read a criticism on it, from some coarse pen, dressed in a little brief authority, in the absence of some editor; a fellow who knows no difference between a sun-flower and a violet, and whose daily aspirations are bounded by an oyster supper, or a mint-julep. I think I see you thumped on the head with his butchering cleaver, every nerve quivering under the crucifixion of his coarse scalpel."