Eleven o’clock.—­I am obsessed with an idea, and I have yielded to it; whether for good or ill, for wisdom or folly, remains to be proved.  I have telephoned Dr. Denbigh and suggested to him that he should go to New York, too.  Considered in any light but that of Peggy’s welfare—­But I am not considering anything in any light but that of Peggy’s welfare.  Dr. Denbigh used to have a little tendresse for Peggy—­it was never anything more, I am convinced.  She is too young for him.  A doctor sees so many women; he grows critical, if not captious.  Character goes for more with him than with most men; looks go for less; and poor little Peggy—­who can deny?—­up to this point in her development is chiefly looks.

I intimated to the doctor that my errand to New York was of an important nature:  that it concerned my younger sister; that my husband was, unfortunately, out of town, and that I needed masculine advice.  I am not in the habit of flattering the doctor, and he swallowed this delicate bait, as I thought he would.  When I asked him if he didn’t think he needed a little vacation, if he didn’t think he could get the old doctor from Southwest Eastridge to take his practice for two days, he said he didn’t know but he could.  The grippe epidemic had gone down, nothing more strenuous than a few cases of measles stood in the way; in fact, Eastridge at the present time, he averred, was lamentably healthy.  When he had committed himself so far as this, he hesitated, and very seriously said: 

“Mrs. Price, you have never asked me to do a foolish thing, and I have known you for a good many years.  It is too late to come over and talk it out with you.  If you assure me that you consider your object in making this request important I will go.  We won’t waste words about it.  What train do you take?”

I am not a person of divination or intuition.  I think I have rather a commonplace, careful, painstaking mind.  But if ever I had an inspiration in my life I think I have one now.  Perhaps it is the novelty of it that makes me confide in it with so little reflection.  My inspiration, in a word, is this: 

Aunt Elizabeth has reached the point where she is ready for a new man.  I know I don’t understand her kind of woman by experience.  I don’t suppose I do by sympathy.  I have to reason her out.

I have reasoned Aunt Elizabeth out to this conclusion:  She always has had, she always must have, she always will have, the admiration of some man or men to engross her attention.  She is an attractive woman; she knows it; women admit it; and men feel it.  I don’t think Aunt Elizabeth is a heartless person; not an irresponsible one, only an idle and unhappy one.  She lives on this intoxicant as other women might live on tea or gossip, as a man would take his dram or his tobacco.  She drinks this wine because she is thirsty, and the plain, cool, spring-water of life has grown stale to her.  It is corked up in bottles like the water sold in towns where the drinking-supply is low.  It has ceased to be palatable to her.