With her childish hands spread flatly as a brace on either side of her she seemed to retreat for a moment into the gold veil of her hair. Then very resolutely her face came peering out again. "And just what did Dr. Brawne--tell _you_?" asked the May Girl. "Why something very romantic," I admitted. "The somewhat astonishing news, in fact, that you were engaged--to him." "Oh, but you know, I'm _not_!" protested the May Girl with unmistakable emphasis. "No--No!" "And that he was hoping to be married next September. On the 15th to be perfectly exact," I confided. "Well, very likely I _shall_ marry him," admitted the May Girl somewhat bafflingly. "But I'm not engaged to him now! Oh, I'm much too young to be engaged to him now! Why, even my grandmother thinks I'm much too young to be engaged to him now!--Why, he's most fifty years old!" she affirmed with widely dilating eyes. "--And I--I've scarcely been off my grandmother's place, you know, until this last winter! But if I'm grown-up enough by September, they say--you see I'll be eighteen and a half by September," she explained painstakingly, "so that's why I wanted to get engaged as much as I could this week!" she interrupted herself with quite merciless irrelevance. "If I've got to be married in September--without ever having been engaged or courted at all--I just thought I'd better go to work and pick up what experience I could--on my own hook!" "Dr.--Dr. Brawne will, of course, make you a very distinguished husband," I stammered, "but are you sure you love him?" "I love everybody!" dimpled the May Girl. "Yes, dogs, of course," I conceded, "and Rabbits--and horses and----" "And kittens," supplemented the May Girl. "Your mother is--not living?" I asked rather abruptly. "My father is dead," said the May Girl. "But my mother is in Egypt." Her lovely face was suddenly all excitement. "My mother ran away!" "Oh! An elopement, you mean?" I laughed. "Ran away with your father. Youngsters used to do romantic things like that." "Ran away _from_ my father," said the May Girl. "And from me. It was when I was four years old. None of us have ever seen her since. It was with one of Dr. Brawne's friends that she ran away. That's one reason, I think, why Dr. Brawne has always felt so sort of responsible for me." "Oh, dear--oh, dear, this is very sad," I winced. "N-o," said the May Girl perfectly simply. "Maybe it was bad but I'm almost sure it's never been sad. Dr. Brawne hears from her sometimes. Mother's always been very happy, I think. But everybody somehow seems to be in an awful hurry to get me settled." "Why?" I asked quite starkly, and could have bitten my tongue out for my impertinence.