ng to hide, and to shelter myself behind an official
address, so I ought not to complain; but all the same I do feel lorn and
lone. First Kathie torn away to another continent, and now Charmion,
who is so wonderfully dear! The next thing will be that Bridget will
announce, some fine morning, that she is going to marry the gardener! I
told her so, in a moment of dejection, and she petrified me by replying
calmly:--

"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 nuisa