"He was crazy over her the minute he set eyes on her, and he just had to see her again, and he got a friend to take her walking and let him meet them, and it went on that way until they got so well acquainted that he could make love to her, and then they got rid of the friend and used to go walking all by themselves, and finally somebody saw them and told Katharine's father. My, but he was mad. He sent for Katharine and she wouldn't lie to him. She said she and the young man were engaged and she was going to marry him, and her father swore something awful, and her mother cried, and Katharine was just as white as marble, but she kept perfectly calm." Amelia was warming to her work. "And they imprisoned her in her room, and her father used to go and try to make her promise she'd never speak to her lover again, and her mother used to cry and beg her to give him up. But they couldn't break her spirit or make her false to her vows, and finally they decided to send her away, so they wrote to Miss Lucilla and told her all about it. Miss Lucilla said she hated to have such a responsibility, but that they offered so much money she didn't feel she could refuse to take the girl--and that, anyway, the parents probably knew best, and it was for Katharine's best interests she should be separated from the boy. So Mr. Holland brought Katharine here, and she's not to stir out without a teacher, and she's not to have any mail save what passes through Miss Lucilla's hands and is opened by her, and she's not to receive any callers unless they bring a note from her father, and she's not to write letters except to her mother." "How'll they help it, I'd like to know? They can't watch her all the time," chorused the two listeners, each mentally devoting her inkstand, pen, stationery and services as postman to the cause of unfortunate love. "How we've misjudged her," sighed Laura May. "I thought it was funny she came here when she's so old. She must be eighteen, isn't she?" asked Kittie. "Pretty near. I'd elope and defy my cruel parents if I was eighteen, but she says she won't elope--that she'll wait until she's twenty-one, and then if her father won't give in, and can't show her anything bad about the man, she'll marry him anyhow. Miss Lucilla had a talk with her, and she said Katharine seemed to be a very nice girl and very reasonable except when it came to breaking off her love affair, but that she was just as stubborn as a rock about that." "What do you suppose they'll do?" Amelia meditated, turning the searchlight of memory upon her favourite novels.