"Practical? Aye!" replied Jean Leslie grimly. "If women were a little more practical and a little less finicky about what they are pleased to call their hearts, this world would be a more understandable place to live in. Listen! I had a girl friend once--as intimate a friend as yours, I dare say--and when the man she wanted asked her to marry him, she said 'No.' She meant 'Yes,' of course,--she merely wanted him to ask her another half-dozen times or so more,--but the stupid man did not understand. He went away, and married some other body whom he did not love, just to be quit of thinking about her. Men are made that way. They will do any daft thing--take to drinking or marry another woman--to drown the pain of remembrance. But this friend of mine, being a woman, could not do that. She just stayed single, and in course of time became an old maid--and a practical one, I promise you! But let us get back to the other girl. Why did she send her lad away?" "Because there was some one else whom she could not leave." "A relative?" "Yes." Jean Leslie nodded her head slowly and comprehendingly. "I see," she said at length. "That is different. You mean that the relative would have been helpless without her?" "Helpless and--friendless," said Peggy gravely. "Did she tell the young man that that was the reason?" "No." "Why?" "Because--because I fancy he was the kind of man who, if he had known the real reason, would have persisted in staying single on her account." "And why not? Men like that are rare." "Well, he--she told me that he was the sort of man who had no idea of looking after himself, or making himself comfortable--the sort of man who really _needed_ a wife. It would have been cruel not to let him go. She might have had to keep him waiting twenty years, and she couldn't bear to think of him living in discomfort and loneliness all that time; so--" "So she gave him another reason?" "Yes." "What reason?" "Oh, the reason a girl usually gives nowadays. Other interests--freedom to live one's own life--and so on. You know." "Yes, I know," said Jean Leslie bitterly. "You need not tell me. I should like to have just five minutes' talk, in here, with the man that invented the higher education of women! However, that is a digression. Your friend's case, as I have said, is different. Evidently she is not _that_ sort of girl. I don't know what advice to give her, poor soul. She is in deep waters. But you can tell her from me--" "Yes?" said Peggy eagerly. "That she is doing the wrong thing"--Peggy caught her breath--"for the right reason. You can also tell her that she is a brave lass. Perhaps it may help her a little to be told that." "I know it will," said Peggy getting up. "Goodbye, Jean, dearest! I think I will go and tell her now." * * * * *