“I don’t know,” I answered weakly.

And I don’t know!  Oh, Jane, your simple experiment proposition is about to become compound quadratics.

Then I got a still further surprise.

“I wouldn’t in the least mind telling Mr. James how I like him—­if you think it is all right,” Nell mused, looking pensively at the first pale star that was rising over Old Harpeth.  “I would enjoy it, because I have always adored him, and it would be so interesting to see what he’d say.”

“Nell,” I said suddenly with determination, “do it!  Tell any man you like how much you like him—­and see what happens.”

“I feel as if—­as if”—­Nell faltered and I don’t blame her; I wouldn’t have said as much to her—­“I feel that to tell Mr. James I love him would ease the pain, the—­pain—­that I feel about Polk.  It would be so interesting to tell a man a thing like that.”

“Do it!” I gasped, and went foot in the class in romantics.

If any jungle explorer thinks he has mapped and charted a woman’s heart he had better pack up his instruments of warfare and recorders and come down to Glendale, Tennessee.

Nell and I must have talked further along the same lines, but I don’t remember what we said.  I have recorded the high lights on the conversation, but long after I lost her I kept my whirlwind feeling of amazement.  It was like trying to balance calmly on the lid of the tinder-box when you didn’t know whether or not you had touched off the fuse.

Has honeysuckle-garbed Old Harpeth been seeing things like this go on for centuries and not interrupted?  I think I would have been sitting there questioning him until now, if Lee and Caroline hadn’t stopped at the gate and called to me.

I think Lee was giving Caroline this stroll home from the post-office in the twilight as an extra treat in her week’s allowance of him, and she was so soft and glowing and sweet and pale that I wonder the Cherokee roses on my hedge didn’t droop their heads with humility before her.

“What’s a lovely lady doing sitting all by herself in the gloaming?” Lee asked in his rich, warm voice.

I hate him!

“Come take a walk with us, Evelina, dear,” Caroline begged softly, though I knew what it would mean to her if I should intrude on this precious hour with her near-lover.

Please, God—­if I seem to be calling You into a profane situation I can’t help it; I must have help!—­show me some way to assist Caroline to make Lee into a real man and then get him for herself.  She must have him and he needs her.  And show me a way quick!  Amen!

Jane, I hope you will be able to pick the data out of this jumble, but I doubt it.  Anyway I’m grateful for the lock and key on this book.

As I stood at the gate and watched Lee and Caroline saunter down the moon-flecked street a mocking bird in the tallest of the oak twins that are my roof shelter called wooingly from one of the top boughs and got his answer from about the same place on the same limb.