"But, Marjorie," he began to explain to her very seriously, "however much he may seem like a mother, he isn't one. He's a man, though he's rather an old one. And he did do things in England so he had to leave. I don't want him to fall in love with you; it would be embarrassing for several reasons." "But why should he fall in love with me?" she demanded innocently. "Lots of people don't." "But, Marjorie," her husband remonstrated, "they do. Look at Logan, now. No reason on earth would have brought him up here but being in love with you. You might as well admit it." "All I ever did was to listen to him when he talked," said Marjorie, shrugging one shoulder. She liked what Francis was saying, but she felt in honor bound to be truthful about such things. "And besides you, there was only one other man ever asked me to marry him--I mean, not counting Logan, if you do count him. Oh, yes, and then there was another one yet, with a guitar. He always said he proposed to me. He wrote me a letter all mixed up, about everything in the world; and I was awfully busy just then, selling tickets for a church fair of Cousin Anna's. I never was any good selling tickets anyhow," explained Marjorie, settling herself more nestlingly in her corner of the window-seat; "and so when he said somewhere in the letter that anything he could ever do for me he would do on the wings of the wind, I wrote back and said yes, he could buy two tickets for the church fair. And, oh, but he was furious! He sent the check for the tickets with the maddest letter you ever saw; and he accused me of refusing him in a cold and ignoring manner. And I'd torn up the letter, the way I always do, and so I couldn't prove anything about it to him. But he didn't come to the fair. Ye-es, I suppose that was a proposal. The man ought to know, shouldn't he?" Francis was tired; he had a consciousness of having behaved unkindly that weighed him down and made for gloom. He had come in with Marjorie for the purpose of delivering an imposing warning. But he couldn't help laughing. "I suppose so," he acknowledged. "Never mind, Marjorie, you didn't really want him, did you?" She shook her head. "Oh, no. Nobody could. Or--wait, somebody must, because I think he's married. But he wasn't the kind a girl that cared what she got wanted." But Francis went back to Pennington. "About Pennington," he began again. "You don't know how easy it is for you to let a man think you're encouraging him, when you really aren't saying a word or doing a thing, or think you aren't. I want you to promise me you'll be very careful where he's concerned, even cold." "Cold!" she said indignantly. "But I'm married! You seem to forget that!" Francis had not forgotten it in the least. He forgot it all too little for his own comfort, he might have told her. But he was rebuked.