te it."

"How unselfish you are! Spare yourself at all hazards, Charlie, for of
course it was not your fault that things got into such a state."

"Oh, Ruth, don't!"

"Well, I won't. But do you realize how I should insult her if I went to
her? It's bad enough for you, the man she loves, to tell her. From any one
else it would be unforgivable. Do as you like. You promised to follow my
advice. Take it and do as you will with it. But I will guarantee the
result if you will do as I say. Come, Charlie. One hour, and it will all
be over, and you can marry Frankie."

It was like getting him into a dentist's chair. I felt a wholesome
self-contempt as I thus sugar-coated his pill, but he was so abject in his
misery.

Charlie brightened up perceptibly at the alluring prospect. He shut his
eyes to the dark path which led to happiness, and was revelling in its
glory.

"Ruth, you dear thing! I don't see how I ever can thank you enough," he
said, taking both my hands in his. "I ought to have stuck to you, that's
what I ought to have done. You would have kept me straight. Do you know, I
used to be awfully in love with you. You really were my first love. I was
about eighteen then. You don't look a day older, and you are just as sweet
as ever."

I laughed outright.

"What did I tell you?" I cried. "You can't help making love to save your
life. Your gratitude is getting you into deeper water every minute. Go
home, do. Run for your life, or you'll be engaged to me too. _Then_
who'll help you out?"

He acted upon my suggestion and went hastily.

Tabby, did you ever? He never was in love with me, never on this earth.
Whatever possessed him to say such a thing? He loses his head, that's what
he does. I hope he won't meet any woman younger than his grandmother
before he gets home, or he might propose to her.

* * * * *

My heart stands still when I think of Louise King.

IX

THE MADONNA OF THE QUIET MIND

"It is not true that love makes all things easy, but it makes us
choose what is difficult."

Across the street, in plain view from my window, has come to dwell a
little brown wren of a woman with her five babies. The house, hitherto
inconspicuous among its finer neighbors, at the advent of the Mayo family
suddenly bloomed into a home. The lawn blossomed with living flowers and
the windows framed faces which shamed, in