I was too sorry for her to be hurt by her words about Julia. That little slip about the tram had completely betrayed her, and it was against chance, and not against Julia, that she sought an occasion. Nevertheless the merciless mistrust of youth lay behind. The beginning and end of it was that she didn't like Julia, and her young heart had not yet learned the duplicity that makes us more rather than less sweet to those whom we dislike. She broke out again: "And I _won't_ go to that dance to-morrow! I _won't_ be scolded and given a new frock and told I mustn't go out of the house! Mother and Miss Oliphant can go without me, and when I get back to London I shall earn my own living and I shall be able to do what I like then!" "Very few people who earn their own living do what they like, Jennie." "Well, it'll be a change anyway," she retorted. A cheerful call of "Jen-nie-e-e!" came from the house. We all used a marked brightness in speaking to Jennie that evening. "Yes, mother--I'm only with Uncle George." "Don't be long, darling." "I'll bring her in presently," I answered for her; and we continued to stand side by side. I suppose that ordinarily a man of my years would keep such a dismissal as I had received that afternoon locked in his own breast, or would at any rate hesitate before sharing it with a young girl. And I did hesitate. But trouble is mysteriously lightened when it is merged in another trouble, and to cheer Jennie up was the aim of all of us that night. And I think that perhaps the Jennie I wanted to tell was Jennie the woman, not Jennie the child. So "Jennie," I said quietly, "you're not the only one." "What do you mean?" she asked. "I've had my medicine too this afternoon." "Your medicine?" "Oh," I took myself up, "not that kind of medicine. I mean that you're not the only one who's had to go through it this afternoon." "I don't understand you, Uncle George." "While you went for a bicycle ride I went for a walk with somebody else." "You went for a walk with Miss Oliphant, didn't you?" "Yes. And I asked her not to remain Miss Oliphant any longer." I felt the eager uprush of her solicitude. "Oh, Uncle George! Do you mean you asked Miss Oliphant to marry you?" "Yes." "So you're engaged?" The words jumped from her. "No." "Hasn't she decided yet?" "Yes, she's decided." "What!" A deep, deep breath. "You don't mean that she said No?" "I'm afraid she did." "_Oh!_" She threw her arms about my waist and held me strongly. "Oh! Poor Uncle George!" "So you see we're in the cart together, Jennie. I thought I'd tell you. I don't suppose I shall ever tell anybody else." And I knew that I could not have told her three weeks before. That is how we with our belated loves strike the young--we of the Valley of Bones. Nevertheless my mother's embrace had been hardly more maternal than was the pressure of those seventeen-year-old arms that night.