But all this doesn't make Father like _them_. I'm not sure but it makes him dislike them. Anyhow, he won't have anything to do with them. He always runs away over to the observatory, or somewhere, and won't see them; and I've heard him say things about them to Aunt Jane, too--words that sound all right, but that don't mean what they say, and everybody knows they don't. So, as I said before, I don't see any chance of Father's having a love story to help out this book--not right away, anyhow. As for _my_ love story--I don't see any chance of that's beginning, either. Yet, seems as if there ought to be the beginning of it by this time--I'm going on fifteen. Oh, there have been _beginnings_, lots of them--only Aunt Jane wouldn't let them go on and be endings, though I told her good and plain that I thought it perfectly all right; and I reminded her about the brook and river meeting where I stood, and all that. But I couldn't make her see it at all. She said, "Stuff and nonsense"--and when Aunt Jane says _both_ stuff and nonsense I know there's nothing _doing_. (Oh, dear, that's slang! Aunt Jane says she does wish I would eliminate the slang from my vocabulary. Well, I wish _she'd_ eliminate some of the long words from _hers_. Marie said that--not Mary.) Well, Aunt Jane said stuff and nonsense, and that I was much too young to run around with silly boys. You see, Charlie Smith had walked home from school with me twice, but I had to stop that. And Fred Small was getting so he was over here a lot. Aunt Jane stopped _him_. Paul Mayhew--yes, _Paul Mayhew_, Stella's brother!--came home with me, too, and asked me to go with him auto-riding. My, how I did want to go! I wanted the ride, of course, but especially I wanted to go because he was Mrs. Mayhew's son. I just wanted to show Mrs. Mayhew! But Aunt Jane wouldn't let me. That's the time she talked specially about running around with silly boys. But she needn't have. Paul is no silly boy. He's old enough to get a license to drive his own car. But it wasn't just because he was young that Aunt Jane refused. I found out afterward. It was because he was any kind of a man paying me attention. I found that out through Mr. Claude Livingstone. Mr. Livingstone brings our groceries. He's a _real_ young gentleman--tall, black mustache, and lovely dark eyes. He goes to our church, and he asked me to go to the Sunday-School picnic with him. I was _so_ pleased. And I supposed, of course, Aunt Jane would let me go with _him. He's_ no silly boy! Besides, I knew him real well, and liked him. I used to talk to him quite a lot when he brought the groceries. But did Aunt Jane let me go? She did not. Why, she seemed almost more shocked than she had been over Charlie Smith and Fred Small, and the others. "Mercy, child!" she exclaimed. "Where in the world do you pick up these people?" And she brought out that "these people" _so_ disagreeably! Why, you'd think Mr. Livingstone was a foreign Japanese, or something.