"Indeed, and he's been after pestering me to do it since the moment we set foot. There's a deal worse things I might do!" "_Bridget_!" I gasped; and I lay back in my chair. I had spoken in the most absolute unbelief. There were no illusions between Bridget and me, each knew the other's age to an hour, and Queen Anne herself had not seemed to me more dead to romance than my staid maid. I stared at her broad, worn face, her broad, elderly figure in a petrified surprise. "Bridget, do you really mean--do you honestly mean that you like him, too?" She simpered like any bit of a girl. "And why wouldn't I be liking him, Miss Evelyn? Isn't he the fine figure of a man, and as pleasant a way with him as if he'd been Irish himself?" "But, Bridget, you're forty-five! Do women--can women--is it possible to--to _care_ at forty-five?" Bridget chuckled; not a bit offended, but simply amused and superior. "What's forty-foive, but the proime of life? _Care_--are you asking? 'Deed, it's not forty-five that's going to see a heart frozen stiff. Ye mind me of the old dame of eighty, who was asked what was the age when a woman stopped caring about a man. `'Deed,' says she, `I can't tell ye that. You'll have to be asking someone older than me!'" She laughed again, and I took my turn at looking superior. "Then, of course, under the circumstances, you will not be inclined to come with me to town?" "'Deed, and I will then. I'd rather be with you than any man that walks. And besides," added Bridget shrewdly, "won't he be all the keener for doing without me a bit?" I jumped up and marched out of the room, feeling jarred and irritated, and utterly out of sympathy. That's the worst of being a spinster, you can never count on your companions as a continuance! Kathie left me at the invitation of a man she had known a few months; Charmion regards me as a narcotic to distract her thoughts from another man, and flies off the moment his memory becomes troublesome; and now even Bridget! Men are a nuisance. They upset everything. I've come to the vicarage. When Delphine heard of our departure from "Pastimes" she developed a sudden and violent desire to have me for a visitor for a short time before I left. She is nervy and depressed ("tired out after her hard work!" the dear Vicar translates it), and has got it into her head that my society is the one and only thing that can set her right. It is flattering, and convenient into the bargain, for we are lending "Pastimes" to the widow of a poor clergyman, and it will be a help to her to have me at hand until she has settled down. It seemed a waste of good things to leave the house empty through all the lovely autumn months. This poor soul is delighted to come; we are delighted to have her; the cook and housemaid are--_resigned_ to the change of mistress; more one cannot expect.