She was a sensible little thing, Emily.  “Of course I’ll wait.  But we mustn’t just sit back and let the years go by.  We’ve got to help.”

She went about it as if she were already a little match-making matron.  She corralled all the men she had ever known and introduced them to Babe, Carrie, and Eva separately, in pairs, and en masse.  She arranged parties at which Babe could display the curl.  She got up picnics.  She stayed home while Jo took the three about.  When she was present she tried to look as plain and obscure as possible, so that the sisters should show up to advantage.  She schemed, and planned, and contrived, and hoped; and smiled into Jo’s despairing eyes.

And three years went by.  Three precious years.  Carrie still taught school, and hated it.  Eva kept house, more and more complainingly as prices advanced and allowance retreated.  Stell was still Babe, the family beauty; but even she knew that the time was past for curls.  Emily’s hair, somehow, lost its glint and began to look just plain brown.  Her crinkliness began to iron out.

“Now, look here!” Jo argued, desperately, one night.  “We could be happy, anyway.  There’s plenty of room at the house.  Lots of people begin that way.  Of course, I couldn’t give you all I’d like to, at first.  But maybe, after a while—­”

No dreams of salons, and brocade, and velvet-footed servitors, and satin damask now.  Just two rooms, all their own, all alone, and Emily to work for.  That was his dream.  But it seemed less possible than that other absurd one had been.

You know that Emily was as practical a little thing as she looked fluffy.  She knew women.  Especially did she know Eva, and Carrie, and Babe.  She tried to imagine herself taking the household affairs and the housekeeping pocketbook out of Eva’s expert hands.  Eva had once displayed to her a sheaf of aigrettes she had bought with what she saved out of the housekeeping money.  So then she tried to picture herself allowing the reins of Jo’s house to remain in Eva’s hands.  And everything feminine and normal in her rebelled.  Emily knew she’d want to put away her own freshly laundered linen, and smooth it, and pat it.  She was that kind of woman.  She knew she’d want to do her own delightful haggling with butcher and vegetable pedlar.  She knew she’d want to muss Jo’s hair, and sit on his knee, and even quarrel with him, if necessary, without the awareness of three ever-present pairs of maiden eyes and ears.

“No!  No!  We’d only be miserable.  I know.  Even if they didn’t object.  And they would, Jo.  Wouldn’t they?”

His silence was miserable assent.  Then, “But you do love me, don’t you, Emily?”

“I do, Jo.  I love you—­and love you—­and love you.  But, Jo, I—­can’t.”

“I know it, dear.  I knew it all the time, really.  I just thought, maybe, somehow—­”

The two sat staring for a moment into space, their hands clasped.  Then they both shut their eyes, with a little shudder, as though what they saw was terrible to look upon.  Emily’s hand, the tiny hand that was so unexpectedly firm, tightened its hold on his, and his crushed the absurd fingers until she winced with pain.