Page:The time spirit; a romantic tale (IA timespiritromant00snaiiala).pdf/309

 and that when he edits a paper of his own, and he's quite made up his mind that it won't be long before he does, I can have my portrait in it as often as I want."

"My Lord!"

"All very honestly meant," laughed Mary Plantagenet. "It is very charming of Alf—a nom de guerre, by the way. His real name is Michael Conner, but now he's Alf of the Millennium. And the other day at our interview, when he came to talk of old times, somehow I couldn't help loving him."

"What, love—that!"

"There's something to love in everybody, my dear. It's really very easy to like people if you hunt for the positive—if that's not a high brow way of putting it! The other day when Alf began to talk of his ambitions, and of the wife he had married, and of the little Alfs and the little Alfesses, I thought the more there are of you the merrier, because after all you are rather fine, you are good for the community, and you make this old world go round. Anyhow we began as enemies, and now we are friends 'for keeps,' and both Alf and I are so much the better for knowing it."

"I wonder!"

"Of course we are. And when Alf is a great editor, as he means to be, and he is able to carry out his great scheme of founding a Universal Love and Admiration Society, for the purpose of bringing out the best in everybody, including foreign nations—his very own idea, and to my mind a noble one—he has promised to make me an original member."

"A very original member!" The Tenderfoot scoffed.

But sitting there in the eye of the morning, with the