Why should I wish to be embrased, but become cold and fridgid when about to be?

“It’s come to a Show-down, Bab,” he said, ernestly.  “Either you love me or you don’t.  I’m darned if I know which.”

“Alas, I do not know” I said in a low and pitious voice.  I then buried my face in my hands, and tried to decide.  But when I looked up he was gone, and only the sad breese wailed around me.

I had expected that the Theif would take my hint and act that night, if not scared off by learning that I belonged to the object of his nefarius designs.  But he did not come, and I was wakened on the library table at 8 A. M. by George coming in to open the windows.

I was by that time looking pale and thin, and my father said to me that morning, ere departing for the office: 

“Haven’t anything you’d like to get off your chest, have you, Bab?”

I sighed deeply.

“Father,” I said, “do you think me cold?  Or lacking in afection?”

“Certainly not.”

“Or one who does not know her own mind?”

“Well,” he observed, “those who have a great deal of mind do not always know it all.  Just as you think you know it some new corner comes up that you didn’t suspect and upsets everything.”

“Am I femanine?” I then demanded, in an anxious manner.

“Femanine!  If you were any more so we couldn’t bare it.”

I then inquired if he prefered the clinging Vine or the independant tipe, which follows its head and not its instincts.  He said a man liked to be engaged to a clinging Vine, but that after marriage a Vine got to be a darned nusance and took everything while giving nothing, being the sort to prefer chicken croquets to steak and so on, and wearing a boudoir cap in bed in the mornings.

He then kissed me and said: 

“Just a word of advise, Bab, from a parent who is, of course, extremely old but has not forgoten his Youth entirely.  Don’t try to make yourself over for each new Admirer who comes along.  Be yourself.  If you want to do any making over, try it on the boys.  Most of them could stand it.”

That morning, after changing another tire and breaking three finger nails, I remembered the overcoat and, putting aside my scruples, went through the pockets.  Although containing no Burglar’s tools, I found a sketch of the lower floor of our house, with A cross outside one of the library windows!

I was for a time greatly excited, but calmed myself, since there was work to do.  I felt that, as I was to capture him unaided, I must make a Plan, which I did and which I shall tell of later on.

Alas, while thinking only of securing the Reward and of getting Sis married, so that I would be able to be engaged and enjoy it without worry as to Money, coming out and so on, my Ship of Love was in the hands of the wicked, and about to be utterly destroyed, or almost, the complete finish not coming untill later.  But