"Domestic, I suppose you would like. Men generally, indeed, prefer it to
the other, I am told."

"Ah, Ivy, Ivy! little you know about men, my child!"

He leaned back in his seat and was silent for some minutes. Ivy did not
care to interrupt his thinking. Presently he said,--

"Ivy, how old are you?"

"I shall be seventeen the last day of this month."

A short pause.

"And then eighteen."

"And then nineteen."

"And then twenty. In three years you will be twenty."

"Horrid old, isn't it?"

He turned his head, and looked down upon her with what Ivy thought a
curious kind of smile, but only said,--

"You must not say 'horrid' so much."

By-and-by Ivy grew rather tired of sitting silent and watching the
rustle of the leaves, which hid every other prospect; she turned her
face a little so that she could look at him. He sat with folded arms,