poor Peggy’s lover, was immediately to pack up and leave.  Then I really wondered if that was the wisest thing to do.  I wanted to see for myself if Harry Goward were really in earnest about poor little Peggy and had gotten over his mad infatuation for her aunt and would make her a good husband.  Perhaps I ought to leave, and yet I wonder if I ought.  Harry Goward may have turned pale simply from his memory of what an uncommon fool he had been, and the consideration of the embarrassing position in which his past folly has placed him, if I chose to make revelations.  He might have known that I would not; still, men know so little of women.  I think that possibly I am worrying myself needlessly, and that he is really in love with Peggy.  She is quite a little beauty, and she does know how to put her clothes on so charmingly.  The adjustments of her shirt-waists are simply perfection.  I may be very foolish to go away; I may be even insufferably conceited in assuming that Harry’s change of color signified anything which could make it necessary.  But, after all, he must be fickle and ready to turn from one to another, or deceitful, and I must admit that if Peggy were my daughter, and Harry had never been mad about me six weeks ago, but about some other woman, I should still feel the same way.

Sometimes I wonder if I ought to tell Ada.  She is the girl’s mother.  I might shift the responsibility on to her.  I almost think I will.  She is alone in her room now, I know.  Peggy and Harry have gone for a drive, and the rest have scattered.  It is a good chance.  I really don’t feel as if I ought to bear the whole responsibility alone.  I will go this minute and tell Ada.

Well, I have told Ada, and here I am back in my room, laughing over the result.  I might as well have told the flour-barrel.  Anything like Ada’s ease of character and inability to worry or even face a disturbing situation I have never seen.  I laugh, although her method of receiving my tale was not, so to speak, flattering to me.  Ada was in her loose white kimono, and she was sitting at her shady window darning stockings in very much the same way that a cow chews her cud; and when I told her, under promise of the strictest secrecy, she just laughed that placid little laugh of hers and said, taking another stitch, “Oh, well, boys are always falling in love with older women.”  And when I asked if she thought seriously that Peggy might not be running a risk, she said:  “Oh dear, no; Harry is devoted to the child.  You can’t be foolish enough.  Aunt Elizabeth, to think that he is in love with you now?”

I said, “Certainly not.”  It was only the principle involved; that the young man must be very changeable, and that Peggy might run a risk in the future if Harry were thrown in much with other women.

Ada only laughed again, and kept on with her darning, and said she guessed there was no need to worry.  Harry seemed to her very much like Cyrus, and she was sure that Cyrus had never thought of another woman besides herself (Ada).