“I think I just met the happiest person in the world,” Marianne exclaimed as she bustled in, setting aside her parasol and fussing with her shawl. “How envious I am.”

Ethel looked up from her perusal of Fordyce. “Oh? There are very few contexts in which *I* should wish to be known as ‘the happiest person in the world’,” she replied levelly.

Marianne’s doe-like hazel eyes widened behind her wire-rimmed spectacles. “Why Ethel,” she protested. “Whyever not?”

“Happiness is transient,” Ethel replied simply. “Pursuit of personal happiness is either pursuit of pleasure: which is self-indulgent and hedonistic, or pursuit of contentment, which, while certainly less objectionable than hedonism, I feel tends to lead to complacency. People who are content in their current circumstance have no occasion to strive for better.”

“What a cynical view you take of happiness,” Marianne said brightly. Then, having moved on from fiddling with her shawl to fiddling with her gloves and the strings of her reticule, she pouted a little, and added, “And you began moralizing before you had any context. My example might not be at all relevant for your points.”

Ethel was about to point out that Marianne’s example was indeed very unlikely to be relevant, given her penchant for hyperbole and her passion for imagining more interesting lives for their neighbors than they were ever likely to experience in truth. However, she deemed it wiser to concede the point. “Do go on, then,” she said, resigning herself to hearing a detailed account.

“You remember Mrs. Gregorson?”

“I believe so—Mrs. Margaret Gregorson, who was Meg Willis when we were at school?”

“Yes, though I heard Mr. Gregorson call her Daisy—is not that sweet?”

“Is that why you call her the happiest person in the world?” Ethel asked in amusement.

“Oh not *her*,” Marianne said with some impatience, finally divesting herself of shawl, gloves *and* reticule and casting herself dramatically down onto the teal-upholstered settee. “It was only that I had heard from Mrs. Freeman that she was in Town and I decided to renew our acquaintance. The Gregorsons have lived very quietly in ____, it seems, since their marriage, for Mr. Gregorson’s means were not so great. But they have recently come into a small fortune owing to the death of Mr. Gregorson’s uncle, who was himself a perpetual bachelor and had no children of his own to inherit.”

“So Mr. Gregorson is the happiest person in the world?” Ethel grasped futilely for the thread of the conversation in the labyrinth of Marianne’s volubility.

“No, no, Ethel, do stop interrupting. When I arrived, there was already another lady in the Gregorson’s parlor. I assumed she must be another caller, though I did not recognize her from our school days but Mrs. Gregorson clarified that she was, in fact, lodging with them, and introduced her as Miss Hawkley: a cousin of Mr. Gregorson.” Here, Marianne paused expectantly.

Ethel eyed her warily, wondering if this Miss Hawkley would prove yet another bystander in the matter of the world’s happiest person. “And *she*, in your estimation, is the world’s—“

“Yes!” Marianne exclaimed before she could finish the inquiry. “For it was revealed in the course of our discussion that Miss Hawkley is surpassingly fond of books of all sorts, and was a great favorite of this uncle. While Mr. Gregorson inherited most of his belongings which were of any consequence, his extensive personal library he left entirely to her. She was so *pleased*, Ethel! She could hardly keep from smiling the whole time we were speaking: she even apologized for it, saying she knew it must seem indecorous so soon after the passing of a close relative, but she was soon declaiming once again on the breadth and rarity of the material. She said it would always remind her of the happy times she spent with her uncle, and that, while she grieved his passing, she was pleased that he had gone to his reward knowing that his precious collection would be well looked after and loved with the same devotion as he had always shown it. And so I found myself thinking that if I had something about which I felt so passionately, I would be the happiest person in the world. And that is what I thought on the whole way back to here.” She concluded a little breathlessly, cheeks pink and eyes sparkling behind her spectacles as she re-adjusted them to observe Ethel’s reaction.