and not dwell on that.  Experienced as we girls are, and drinking of life in deep draughts though we do, we still admit—­Maudie, Mabel, and I—­that we do not yet know much about love.  But one cannot know everything at fifteen, and, as Mabel Blossom always says, “there is yet time.”  We all know just the kind of men they’re going to be, though.  Mine will be a brave young officer, of course, for a general’s daughter should not marry out of the army, and he will die for his country, leaving me with a broken heart.  Maudie Joyce says hers must be a man who will rule her with a rod of iron and break her will and win her respect, and then be gentle and loving and tender.  And Mabel Blossom says she’s perfectly sure hers will be fat and have a blond mustache and laugh a great deal.  Once she said maybe none of us would ever get any; but the look Maudie Joyce and I turned upon her checked her thoughtless words.  Life is bitter enough as it is without thinking of dreadful things in the future.  I sometimes fear that underneath her girlish gayety Mabel Blossom conceals a morbid nature.  But I am forgetting Josephine James.  This story will tell why, with all her advantages of wealth and education and beauty, she remained a maiden lady till she was twenty-eight; and she might have kept on, too, if Kittie had not taken matters in hand and settled them for her.

Kittie says Josephine was always romantic and spent long hours of her young life in girlish reveries and dreams.  Of course that isn’t the way Kittie said it, but if I should tell this story in her crude, unformed fashion, you wouldn’t read very far.  What Kittie really said was that Josephine used to “moon around the grounds a lot and bawl, and even try to write poetry.”  I understand Josephine’s nature, so I will go on and tell this story in my own way, but you must remember that some of the credit belongs to Kittie and Mabel Blossom; and if Sister Irmingarde reads it in class, they can stand right up with me when the author is called for.

Well, when Josephine James graduated she got a lot of prizes and things, for she was a clever girl, and had not spent all her time writing poetry and thinking deep thoughts about life.  She realized the priceless advantages of a broad and thorough education and of association with the most cultivated minds.  That sentence comes out of our prospectus.  Then she went home and went out a good deal, and was very popular and stopped writing poetry, and her dear parents began to feel happy and hopeful about her, and think she would marry and have a nice family, which is indeed woman’s highest, noblest mission in life.  But Josephine cherished an ideal.