Well, anyhow, Kittie did it, and she said George was just as nice as he could be.  He told her he had “never listened to a more alluring proposition” (she remembered just the words he used), and that she was “a little trump”; and then he said he feared, alas! it was impossible, as even his strong manhood could not face the prospect of the long and dragging years that lay between.  Besides, he said, his heart was already given, and he guessed he’d better stick to Josephine, and would his little sister help him to get her?  Kittie wiped her eyes and said she would.  She had been crying.  It must indeed be a bitter experience to have one’s young heart spurned!  But George took her into the club-house and gave her tea and lots of English muffins and jam, and somehow Kittie cheered up, for she couldn’t help feeling there were still some things in life that were nice.

Of course after that she wanted dreadfully to help George, but there didn’t seem to be much she could do.  Besides, she had to go right back to school in September, and being a studious child, I need hardly add that her entire mind was then given to her studies.  When she went home for the Christmas holidays she took Mabel Blossom with her.  Mabel was more than a year older, but Kittie looked up to her, as it is well the young should do to us older girls.  Besides, Kittie had had her thirteenth birthday in November, and she was letting down her skirts a little and beginning to think of putting up her hair.  She said when she remembered that she asked George to wait till she grew up it made her blush, so you see she was developing very fast.

As I said before, she took Mabel Blossom home for Christmas, and Mr. and Mrs. James were lovely to her, and she had a beautiful time.  But Josephine was the best of all.  She was just fine.  Mabel told me with her own lips that if she hadn’t seen Josephine James’s name on the catalogue as a graduate in ’93, she never would have believed she was so old.  Josephine took the two girls to matinees and gave a little tea for them, and George Morgan was as nice as she was.  He was always bringing them candy and violets, exactly as if they were young ladies, and he treated them both with the greatest respect, and stopped calling them the kids when he found they didn’t like it.  Mabel got as fond of him as Kittie was, and they were both wild to help him to get Josephine to marry him; but she wouldn’t, though Kittie finally talked to her long and seriously.  I asked Kittie what Josephine said when she did that, and she confessed that Josephine had laughed so she couldn’t say anything.  That hurt the sensitive child, of course, but grown-ups are all too frequently thoughtless of such things.  Had Josephine but listened to Kittie’s words on that occasion, it would have saved Kittie a lot of trouble.

Now I am getting to the exciting part of the story.  I am always so glad when I get to that.  I asked Sister Irmingarde why one couldn’t just make the story out of the exciting part, and she took a good deal of time to explain why, but she did not convince me; for besides having the artistic temperament I am strangely logical for one so young.  Some day I shall write a story that is all climax from beginning to end.  That will show her!  But at present I must write according to the severe and cramping rules which she and literature have laid down.