Here Johnnie broke down entirely, and with a howling cry fled away into the garden, leaving Jessie perfectly amazed as she thought “how very unsatisfactory it was to meddle with a love-affair.” Meanwhile Johnnie had seated himself beneath a tree in a sunny, quiet spot, where he was crying bitterly, and feeling almost as much grieved as when his mother died. Indeed, he fancied that he felt worse, for then there was hope in the future, and now there was none. Hearing the sound of the gate, and thinking his father had returned, he rose at last, and drying his eyes, repaired to the house, finding his conjecture true, for Squire Russell had come, and was reading his paper in the library. With his face all flushed with excitement, and his eyes red with weeping, Johnnie went to him at once, and bolting the door, began impetuously, “I would not mind it a bit, father. I’d keep a stiff upper lip, just as if I did not care.” “What do you mean?” the Squire asked, in surprise, and Johnnie continued: “I mean that you and Aunt Dora have _played out_, and you may as well hang up your fiddle, for she don’t want you, and she does want Dr. West, and that’s why she has grown poor as a shark and white as chalk. I just found it out, standing by the door and hearing the greatest lot of stuff,—how he asked her to marry him once, and she got into a tantrum and wouldn’t say yes, though she wanted to all the time. What makes girls act so, I wonder?” Squire Russell was too deeply interested to offer any explanation with regard to girls’ actions, and Johnnie went on: “Then he went off to California, and didn’t write, as she hoped he would, and you and I asked her to have you, and she did not want to, but thought it was her duty, and wrote to ask the doctor, and he didn’t get the letter for weeks and weeks, and when he did he was most distracted, and cut stick for home; and Aunt Dora didn’t know it, and went off to the Lake, and sat with both feet in the water, and Mr. Robert West found her there and told her, and got her home, and she most had a fit, and, O thunder! what a muss they have kicked up!” Here Johnnie stopped for breath, while his father grasped the table with both hands, as if he thus would steady himself, while he said slowly, with long breaths between the words, “How—was it—my son? Tell me—again. I—I do not—think—I understand.” Briefly then Johnnie recapitulated, telling how he happened to find it out, and adding, “Such kissing I never heard! _Fourteen_ smashers, for I counted; and don’t you know, father, how, if you even touched her hand or her hair, she would wiggle and squirm as if it hurt her? Well, I peeked through the crack of the door, and instead of wigglin’ she snugged up to him as if she liked it, and I know she did, for her eyes fairly shone, they were so bright, when she looked at him. But, father, she talked real good about you, and said that if you insisted she should marry you just the same; but you won’t father, will you?”