“Not before I’m twenty-one,” I answered before I thought, and then I grew pink. Viola laughed, as Maria, the new maid, opened the door for us. “Oh, he’ll get you,” she prophesied, “and he’ll court you divinely. . . . It’s plain that he doesn’t like me, but I like and admire him in spite of it. . . . And you know lots of women go right along with their careers after marriage.” I didn’t answer that, but I did know that if I ever did marry, my first thought would be to follow, as nearly as I could, the fine career my Mother had had and to make my husband as comfortable and as happy as Mother had made Father. For I feel that that should come first. “I wish you wouldn’t,” I said, sharply, after we had gone in the cool, dim corridor, “I don’t want to have to think about it yet.” “Sorry,” she said. And I said I was sorry I had been cross. Then the Pension door opened again, and Leslie, followed by a tall, bronzed man, came in. I liked his looks, and I was reassured for him, after I met him, for he had something of Leslie’s manner--an almost lordly, commanding, I-want-what-I-want-when-I-want-it-and-I-intend-to-get-it air. I think a good many people who have had _too_ much money and have been able to issue _too_ many orders get that. But if Leslie was going to marry him--and I found soon she was--I knew he would need it. He stayed for dinner and was very charming to every one, but most charming to Leslie and after he left, Leslie came to my room to talk. “Well?” she questioned from the doorway. “I like him,” I answered, as she came toward me. “I love him,” she said, and she said it as sensibly and openly as I had ever heard her say anything, “and,” she continued, “he is going to let me marry him.” I laughed, and she joined me. “It isn’t a joke,” she stated after a moment. “I know it,” I answered. “He said he had been worried ever since that New York visit, over hurting me,” she went on, “and that, when I dismissed him, he realized he had been stupid in not knowing before that I had grown up. And he said, when he realized I was grown up, that he suddenly began to care for me in a different way. And you know how I feel--” (She fumbled for a pink linen handkerchief, wiped her eyes and then blew her nose) “And when I told him I’d cried over him, it almost killed him, but--he liked it,” she ended. I knew he would have liked it, because men all do thoroughly enjoy hearing about women who cry because they love them (the men) which seems funny when you consider that, if the same men see them cry, they almost have a fit and are _far_ from comfortable. But, as I read in some book, Life is one vast riddle. “I’m very happy,” said Leslie, as she stood up. And I said I was very glad and that I hoped she would keep on being so even after she was married and settled down. And she said she expected to, and then she said, in a quick, remembering way, “Oh--” and brought out an unstamped note that was addressed to me by Miss Sheila.