Mrs. Darling stayed on the piazza two whole hours longer, but Father never came out at all again.

It was the next morning that Susie said this over the back-yard fence to Bridget: 

“It does beat all how popular this house is with the ladies—­after college hours!”

And Bridget chuckled and answered back: 

“Sure it is!  An’ I do be thinkin’ the Widder Darlin’ is a heap fonder of Miss Jane now than she would have been had poor dear Mr. Darlin’ lived!”

And she chuckled again, and so did Susie.  And then, all of a sudden, I knew.  It was Father all those ladies wanted.  It was Father Mrs. Darling wanted.  They came here to see him.  They wanted to marry him. They were the prospective suitors.  As if I didn’t know what Susie and Bridget meant!  I’m no child!

But all this doesn’t make Father like them.  I’m not sure but it makes him dislike them.  Anyhow, he won’t have anything to do with them.  He always runs away over to the observatory, or somewhere, and won’t see them; and I’ve heard him say things about them to Aunt Jane, too—­words that sound all right, but that don’t mean what they say, and everybody knows they don’t.  So, as I said before, I don’t see any chance of Father’s having a love story to help out this book—­not right away, anyhow.

As for my love story—­I don’t see any chance of that’s beginning, either.  Yet, seems as if there ought to be the beginning of it by this time—­I’m going on fifteen.  Oh, there have been beginnings, lots of them—­only Aunt Jane wouldn’t let them go on and be endings, though I told her good and plain that I thought it perfectly all right; and I reminded her about the brook and river meeting where I stood, and all that.

But I couldn’t make her see it at all.  She said, “Stuff and nonsense”—­and when Aunt Jane says both stuff and nonsense I know there’s nothing doing. (Oh, dear, that’s slang!  Aunt Jane says she does wish I would eliminate the slang from my vocabulary.  Well, I wish she’d eliminate some of the long words from hers.  Marie said that—­not Mary.)

Well, Aunt Jane said stuff and nonsense, and that I was much too young to run around with silly boys.  You see, Charlie Smith had walked home from school with me twice, but I had to stop that.  And Fred Small was getting so he was over here a lot.  Aunt Jane stopped him.  Paul Mayhew—­yes, Paul Mayhew, Stella’s brother!—­came home with me, too, and asked me to go with him auto-riding.  My, how I did want to go!  I wanted the ride, of course, but especially I wanted to go because he was Mrs. Mayhew’s son.  I just wanted to show Mrs. Mayhew!  But Aunt Jane wouldn’t let me.  That’s the time she talked specially about running around with silly boys.  But she needn’t have.  Paul is no silly boy.  He’s old enough to get a license to drive his own car.