But Florence was not yet able to speak of it, even inside the family; so surprising, sometimes, are parents' theories of what will not interest their children. She sat staring, her mouth open, and in the uncertain illumination of the room these symptoms of her emotional condition went unobserved. "I say, you won't speak of Julia's engagement outside the family, will you, Florence?" "Papa!" she gasped. "Did Aunt Julia write she was _engaged_?" "Yes." "To get _married_?" "It would seem so." "To _who_?" "'To whom,' Florence," her mother suggested primly. "Mamma!" the daughter cried. "Who's Aunt Julia engaged to get married to? Noble Dill?" "Good gracious, _no_!" Mrs. Atwater exclaimed. "What an absurd idea! It's to a young man in the place she's visiting--a stranger to all of us. Julia only met him a few weeks ago." Here she forgot Florence, and turned again to her husband, wearing her former expression of experienced foreboding. "It's just as I said. It's exactly like Julia to do such a reckless thing!" "But as we don't know anything at all about the young man," he remonstrated, "how do you know it's reckless?" "How do you know he's young?" Mrs. Atwater retorted crisply. "All in the world she said about him was that he's a lawyer. He may be a widower, for all we know, or divorced, with seven or eight children." "Oh, no, Mollie!" "Why, he _might_!" she insisted. "For all we know, he may be a widower for the third or fourth _time_, or divorced, with any _number_ of children! If such a person proposed to Julia, you know yourself she'd hate to be disappointing!" Her husband laughed. "I don't think she'd go so far as to actually accept 'such a person' and write home to announce her engagement to the family. I suppose most of her swains here have been in the habit of proposing to her just as frequently as she was unable to prevent them from going that far; and while I don't think she's been as discouraging with them as she might have been, she's never really accepted any of 'em. She's never been engaged before." "No," Mrs. Atwater admitted. "Not to this extent! She's never quite announced it to the family before, that is." "Yes; I'd hate to have Julia's job when she comes back!" Julia's brother admitted ruefully. "What job?" "Breaking it to her admirers." "Oh, _she_ isn't going to do that!" "She'll have to, now," he said. "She'll either have to write the news to 'em, or else tell 'em, face to face, when she comes home." "She won't do either." "Why, how could she get out of it?"