"But the bride," said Kitty; "you will have to keep the bride." And without a moment's warning, from laughing till she wept, she began to weep in earnest. I haven't seen her cry so since she came to us, not even that miserable first night. She struggled with herself, and seemed dreadfully ashamed, and angry with me that I should have seen her cry. Did she suppose I thought she was crying because she wasn't going to be a bride, after all? * * * * * "Oh, Mrs. Daly, I feel so ill!" were Kitty's first words to me when I woke this morning. I looked her over and questioned her, and concluded that a sleepless night, with not very pleasant thoughts for company, might be held responsible for a good share of her wretchedness. "What were you lying awake about? Your new champion, Uncle George?" I asked her. She owned that it was. "Don't you see, Mrs. Daly, mamma doesn't leave room for the possibility of my refusing him. And if I do refuse him, he'll simply take me back to England, and then, between him and mamma, and all of them, I don't know what may happen." "Kitty," I said, "no girl who has just escaped from one unhappy engagement is going to walk straight into another with her eyes wide open. I won't believe you could be so foolish as that." "You don't understand," she said, "what the pressure will be at home--in all love and kindness, of course. And you don't know Uncle George. He is so sure that I need him, he'll force me to take him. He'll take me back to England in any case." "And would you not like to go, Kitty?" "Ah, wouldn't I! But not in that way." She sat up in her flannel camp-gown, and began to braid up her loosened hair. "Kitty," I commanded, "lie down. You are not to get up till luncheon." "I have a plan," she said, "and I must see Cecil Harshaw; he must help me carry it out. There is no one else who can." "You have all day to see him in." "Not all day, Mrs. Daly. He must be ready to start to-morrow. Uncle George will reach Bisuka on the fifteenth, not later. Cecil must meet him there; first, to prepare him for Micky's new arrangement, and second, to persuade him that he does not owe me an offer of marriage in consequence. Cecil will know how to manage it; he must know! I will not have any more of the Harshaws offering themselves as substitutes. It will be very strange if I cannot exist without them somehow."