"You brought Henry. I know the signs. You asked him, and he's so set up about it that he's walking on clouds." "I am afraid." "Of me?" "Of myself." He caught my arm as he helped me across a puddle, and squeezed it. "Good girl!" he said. And later on, when Henry was called again--he's terribly popular, Henry is--he had another chance. "I'm going to see you alone if I have to steal you," he said. Herschenrother called up again the next day, and Madge, who had come home for the Christmas holidays, called me. "Gee, Kit," she said, "you must be getting a trousseau. That tailor's always on the phone." I went. "Hello," said Russell's voice, "how about that fitting?" "I don't know. I'm horribly busy to-day." "It's very important. I--I can't go ahead without it." "Oh, all right," I said. Madge was listening and I had to be careful. "I must have the suit." "You can have anything I've got. How about the Art Gallery? Art is long and time is fleeting. Nobody goes there." "Very well, four o'clock," I replied, and rang off. "Rather a nice voice," Madge said, eying me. "Think I'll go along, Kit. I've been shut up in school until the mere thought of even a good-looking tailor makes me thrill." She was so insistent that I had to go to mother finally, and mother told her she would have to practise. She was furious. Really, mother turned out to be a most understanding person. I got to be quite fond of her. We had a chat that afternoon that brought us closer together than ever. "Things are doing pretty well, mother," I said when she'd finished Madge. "He must be interested when he would take that absurd name." "And the Art Gallery! I dare say he has never voluntarily been inside of one in his life." "Kit," mother said, "what about your father?" "Haven't you told him?" "No; he wouldn't understand." Of course not. I knew men well enough for that. They believe that life and marriage arrange themselves. That it's all a sort of combination of Providence and chance. Predestination plus opportunity! "Can't you tell him you've heard something about Russell, and that he'd better be cool to him?" "And have him turn the man down if it really comes to a proposal!" "That won't matter," I told her. "We'll probably elope anyhow." Mother opposed that vigorously. She said that no matter how good a match it was, there was always something queer about an elopement. And anyhow she'd been giving wedding gifts for years and it was time something came in instead of going out. It was the only point we differed on. Well, father did his best to queer things that very day. All the way through I played in hard luck. Just when things were going right something happened.