"Mr. Ames," Hezekiah interrupted, in the happiest possible imitation of Miss Octavia's manner, "if you think that, because I am a poor lone girl who knows nothing of the great, wide world, I am a fair mark for your cajolery, I assure you that you were never more mistaken in your life!" "You ought n't to mimic your aunt. It is n't respectful; and besides you have something to tell me. What's all this rumpus about Cecilia's silver memorandum-book? Suppose we discuss that and get through with it." We were sitting on the fallen tree, which lay partly in the lake, and Hezekiah leaned over and broke off a number of reeds from the thicket at the water's edge. Out of her pocket she drew a small penknife and trimmed them uniformly. "You see," she began, biting her lip in the earnestness of her labor, "I'm going to tell you something, and yet I 'm not going to tell you. So far as you and I have gone you 've been tolerably satisfactory. If I did n't think you had some wits in your head I should n't have bothered with you at all. That's frank, is n't it?" "It certainly is. But I'm terribly fussed for fear I may not be equal to this new ordeal." "If you fail we shall never meet again; that's all there is to that. Now listen real hard. You know something about it already, but not the main point. Aunt Octavia got father to consent to let her marry us off--Cecilia and me. Cecilia, being older, came first. I was to keep out of the way, and father and I were not to come to Aunt Octavia's new house up there or meddle in any way. While we were abroad I was treated as a little girl, and not as a grown-up at all. But you see I 'm really nineteen, and some of Cecilia's suitors were nice to me when we were traveling. They were nice to me on Cecilia's account, you know." "Of course. You're so hard to look at, it must have been painful to them to be nice to you,--almost like taking poison! Go on, Hezekiah!" "You need n't interrupt me like that. Well, as part of the understanding, and Cecilia agreed to it,--she thought she had to for papa's sake,--she was to marry a particular man. Do you understand me, a particular man? Aunt Octavia gave her the little note-book--she bought it at a shop in Paris at the time Cecilia consented to the plan--and she was to keep a sort of diary, so that she'd know when the right man turned up. Now we will drop the note-book for a minute; only I'll say that Cecilia was to keep the book all to herself and not show it to any one, not even to Aunt Octavia, you know, until the right man had asked Cecilia to marry him. Now who do you suppose, Mr. Ames, that man is?"