“Then you don’t think—?”

“I know better.  I’ll ask Mr. Allen.”

“If you asked him it would make it very hard for him if it wasn’t so,” said Rose.

“I don’t see why.”

“Mr. Allen is a gentleman, and he could not practically accuse a woman of making an unauthorized claim of that sort,” said Rose.

“Well, I won’t say anything about it to him if you think I had better not,” said Sylvia, “but I must say I think it’s pretty hard on a man to have a girl going round telling folks he’s engaged to her when he ain’t.  Eat that lamb chop and them pease while they’re hot.”

“I am going to.  They are delicious.  I didn’t think I was hungry at all, but to have things brought up this way—­”

“You’ve got to eat a saucer of strawberries afterwards,” said Sylvia, happily.

She watched the girl eat, and she was in a sort of ecstasy, which was, nevertheless, troubled.  After a while, when Rose had nearly finished the strawberries, Sylvia ventured a remark.

“Lucy Ayres is a queer girl,” said she.  “I’ve known all about her for some time.  She has been thinking young men were in love with her, when they never had an idea of such a thing, ever since she was so high.”

Sylvia indicated by her out-stretched hand a point about a foot and a half from the floor.

“It seems as if she must have had some reason sometimes,” said Rose, with an impulse of loyalty towards the other girl.  “She is very pretty.”

“As far as I know, no young man in East Westland has ever thought of marrying her,” said Sylvia.  “I think myself they are afraid of her.  It doesn’t do for a girl to act too anxious to get married.  She just cuts her own nose off.”

“I have never seen her do anything unbecoming,” began Rose; then she stopped, for Lucy’s expression, which had caused a revolt in her, was directly within her mental vision.

It seemed as if Sylvia interpreted her thought.  “I have seen her making eyes,” said she.

Rose was silent.  She realized that she, also, had seen poor Lucy making eyes.

“What a girl is so crazy to get married for, anyway, when she has a good mother and a good home, I can’t see,” said Sylvia, leading directly up to the subject in the secret place of her mind.

Rose blushed, with apparently no reason.  “But she can’t have her mother always, you know, Aunt Sylvia,” said she.

“Her mother’s folks are awful long-lived.”

“But Lucy is younger.  In the course of nature she will outlive her mother, and then she will be all alone.”

“What if she is?  ’Ain’t she got her good home and money enough to be independent?  Lucy won’t need to lift a finger to earn money if she’s careful.”

“I always thought it would be very dreadful to live alone,” Rose said, with another blush.

“Well, she needn’t be alone.  There’s plenty of women always in want of a home.  No woman need live alone if she don’t want to.”