“I will,” said he.  And with that we threw away the remainder of our second cigars, and I went up to the side porch to talk with Mrs. Talbert.  What we said I leave you to imagine.  I have always thought her the truest and tenderest woman in the world, but I never knew till that night just how clear-headed and brave she was.  She agreed with me that Peggy’s affair, up to now more or less foolish, though distressing, had now reached a dangerous stage, a breaking-point.  The child was overwrought.  A wrong touch now might wreck her altogether.  But the right touch?  Or, rather, no touch at all, but just an open door before her?  Ah, that was another matter.  My plan was a daring one; it made her tremble a little, but perhaps it was the best one; at all events, she could see no other.  Then she stood up and gave me both hands again.  “I will trust you, my friend,” said she.  “I know that you love us and our children.  You shall do what you think best and I will be satisfied.  Good-night.”

The difficulty with the situation, as I looked it over carefully while indulging in a third cigar in my bedroom, was that the time was desperately short.  It was now one o’clock on Tuesday morning.  About nine Cyrus would perform his sacred duty of crushing his darling Peggy by telling her that she must stay in Eastridge.  At ten o’clock on Saturday the Chromatic would sail with Charles Edward and Lorraine and Stillman Dane.  Yet there were two things that I was sure of:  one was that Peggy ought to go with them, and the other was that it would be good for her to—­but on second thought I prefer to keep the other thing for the end of my story.  My mind was fixed, positively and finally, that the habit of interference in the Talbert family must be broken up.  I never could understand what it is that makes people so crazy to interfere, especially in match-making.  It is a lunacy.  It is presuming, irreverent, immoral, intolerable.  So I worked out my little plan and went to sleep.

Peggy took her father’s decree (which was administered to her privately after breakfast on Tuesday) most loyally.  Of course, he could not give her his real reasons, and so she could not answer them.  But when she appeared at dinner it was clear, in spite of a slight rosy hue about her eyes, that she had decided to accept the sudden change in the situation like a well-bred angel—­which, in fact, she is.

I had run down to Whitman in the morning train to make a call on young Goward, and found him rather an amiable boy, under the guard of an adoring mother, who thought him a genius and was convinced that he had been entrapped by designing young women.  I agreed with her so heartily that she left me alone with him for a half-hour.  His broken arm was doing well; his amatoriness was evidently much reduced by hospital diet; he was in a repentant frame of mind and assured me that he knew he had been an ass as well as a brute (synonymes, dear boy), and that he