Sometimes it seems to me that only the girl and the engagement figure at all in such matters.  I suppose Peggy always alluded to me as “dear Aunt Elizabeth,” when that poor young fellow knew me at the Abercrombies’, where we were staying a year ago, as Miss Lily Talbert.  The situation with regard to him and Peggy fairly puzzles me.  I simply do not know what to do.  Goodness knows I never lifted my finger to attract him.  Flirtations between older women and boys always have seemed to me contemptible.  I never particularly noticed him, although he is a charming young fellow, and there is not as much difference in our ages as in those of Harriet Munroe and her husband, and if I am not mistaken there is more difference between the ages of Ned Temple and his wife.  Poor soul! she looks old enough to be his mother, as I remember him, but that may be partly due to the way she arranges her hair.  However, Ned himself may have changed; there must be considerable wear and tear about matrimony, taken in connection with editing a country newspaper.  If I had married Ned I might have looked as old as Mrs. Temple does.  I wonder what Ned will do when he sees me.  I know he will not turn white, as poor Harry Goward did.  That really worries me.  I am fond of little Peggy, and the situation is really rather awful.  She is engaged to a man who is fond of her aunt and cannot conceal it.  Still, the affection of most male things is curable.  If Peggy has sense enough to retain her love for frills and bows, and puts on her clothes as well, and arranges her hair as prettily, after she has been married a year—­no, ten years (it will take at least ten years to make a proper old-maid aunt of me)—­she may have the innings.  But Peggy has no brains, and it really takes a woman with brains to keep her looks after matrimony.

Of course, the poor little soul has no danger to fear from me; it is lucky for her that her fiance fell in love with me; but it is the principle of the thing which worries me.  Harry Goward must be as fickle as a honey-bee.  There is no assurance whatever for Peggy that he will not fall headlong in love—­and headlong is just the word for it—­with any other woman after he has married her.  I did not want the poor fellow to stick to me, but when I come to think of it that is the trouble.  How short-sighted I am!  It is his perverted fickleness rather than his actual fickleness which worries me.  He has proposed to Peggy when he was in love with another woman, probably because he was in love with another woman.  Now Peggy, although she is not brilliant, in spite of her co-education (perhaps because of it), is a darling, and she deserves a good husband.  She loves this man with her whole heart, poor little thing! that is easy enough to be seen, and he does not care for her, at least not when I am around or when I am in his mind.  The question is, is this marriage going to make the child happy?  My first impulse, when I saw Harry Goward and knew that he was