“Lately I’ve changed my mind, and I think life is too good to live it alone, and that everybody ought to marry any one they wish to, provided the person does not have fits or inherit consumption. Then I went to father and told him so, and he was so pleased that he nearly made me cry, for though he always said that I was everything to him, it wasn’t quite true it seems; and he said that some day I would find out that he was not quite everything to me, and oh, Brooke, I really think I should like to!” Brooke, who was still kneeling by Lucy, put her arms around her, and the two women, each having felt the mysterious throb of the woman heart that made them kin, rested a moment cheek to cheek. Lucy recovered first, and shaking off the tender mood, tossed her head, the usual bravado returning to eye and lip as she said: “Next, I went to see Mrs. Morton and told her that so far as I was concerned the coast was clear, that I bore no malice, and that I hoped she and father would have a jolly old age (she is only six years older than I); but that I simply could not go on the car trip with them, though I would thank her not to announce it until after the start. “She—well, she is a good sort, and I guess we understand each other, for she looked me straight in the face and said she hoped she’d have a chance some day to stand by me in return, and she didn’t slop over or call me ‘dear daughter,’ or say she’d be a mother to me, for any grown woman knows that there is only one who can be that. “Consequently society and Charlie Ashton think that I’m speeding to California, while in reality I’ve flown to you for protection against the blues, and I want to stay a month if you will let me cook and do everything as you do—it is what I need. Who knows but I might turn farmer, or try love in a cottage myself some day.” “A month, Lucy! oh, how good!” cried Brooke. “Yes, you shall do as we do,—you’ll really have to if business rushes as it has since we began,—but I’m afraid you will find it very dull, unless your fate dashes up in an automobile.” “Dull! not a bit of it! Why, if I feel my flirting ability growing rusty, I can practise on the Cub’s elderly paragon, Mr. Stead, or try archaic sentiment on your big farmer man to console him for the sweetheart who has not yet materialized. From your ardent written descriptions of the landscapes about here, and the important places he always fills in them, it seems to me that he must be at least a straying Walther or a prince in disguise, seeking to be loved for himself alone.”