said.

"Board me!" he said. "I haven't spent such an evening for years!"

The Familey acted perfectly absurd about it. Seeing that they were going
to make a fuss, I refused to say with whom I had been walking. You'd
have thought I had committed a crime.

"It has come to this, Barbara," mother said, pacing the floor. "You
cannot be trusted out of our sight. Where do you meet all these men? If
this is how things are now, what will it be when given your Liberty?"

Well, it is to painful to record. I was told not to leave the place for
three days, although allowed the boat-house. And of course Sis had to
chime in that she'd heard a roomer I had run away and got married, and
although of course she knew it wasn't true, owing to no time to do so,
still where there was Smoke there was Fire.

But I felt that their confidence in me was going, and that night, after
all were in the Land of Dreams, I took that wreched suit of clothes and
so on to the boathouse, and hid them in the rafters upstairs.

I come now to the strange Event of the next day, and its sequel.

The Patten place and ours are close together, and no other house near.
Mother had been very cool about the Pattens, owing to nobody knowing
them that we knew. Although I must say they had the most interesting
people all the time, and Sis was crazy to call and meet some of them.

Jane came that day to visit her aunt, and she ran down to see me first
thing.

"Come and have a ride," she said. "I've got the Runabout, and after that
we'll bathe and have a real time."

But I shook my head.

"I'm a prisoner, Jane," I said.

"Honestly! Is it the Play, or somthing else?"

"Somthing else, Jane," I said. "I can tell you nothing more. I am simply
in trouble, as usual."

"But why make you a prisoner, unless----" She stopped suddenly and
stared at me.

"He has claimed you!" she said. "He is here, somwhere about this Place,
and now, having had time to think it over, you do not Want to go to him.
Don't deny it. I see it in your face. Oh, Bab, my heart aches for you."

It sounded so like a play that I kept it up. Alas, with what results!

"What else can I do, Jane?" I said.

"You can refuse, if you do not love him. Oh Bab, I did not say it
before, thinking you loved him. But no man who wears clothes like those
could ever win my heart. At least, not permanently."

Well, she did most of the talking. She had finished the bath towle,
which was a large size, after all, an