e cootie hunt this
morning and caught fifty-three!' Susan positively turned pea-green.
'Mrs. Dr. dear,' she said, 'when I was young, if decent people were so
unfortunate as to get--those insects--they kept it a secret if
possible. I do not want to be narrow-minded, Mrs. Dr. dear, but I still
think it is better not to mention such things.'

"Miranda grew confidential over our vermin shirts and told me all her
troubles. She is desperately unhappy. She is engaged to Joe Milgrave
and Joe joined up in October and has been training in Charlottetown
ever since. Her father was furious when he joined and forbade Miranda
ever to have any dealing or communication with him again. Poor Joe
expects to go overseas any day and wants Miranda to marry him before he
goes, which shows that there have been 'communications' in spite of
Whiskers-on-the-moon. Miranda wants to marry him but cannot, and she
declares it will break her heart.

"'Why don't you run away and marry him?' I said. It didn't go against
my conscience in the least to give her such advice. Joe Milgrave is a
splendid fellow and Mr. Pryor fairly beamed on him until the war broke
out and I know Mr. Pryor would forgive Miranda very quickly, once it
was over and he wanted his housekeeper back. But Miranda shook her
silvery head dolefully.

"'Joe wants me to but I can't. Mother's last words to me, as she lay on
her dying-bed, were, "Never, never run away, Miranda," and I promised.'

"Miranda's mother died two years ago, and it seems, according to
Miranda, that her mother and father actually ran away to be married
themselves. To picture Whiskers-on-the-moon as the hero of an elopement
is beyond my power. But such was the case and Mrs. Pryor at least lived
to repent it. She had a hard life of it with Mr. Pryor, and she thought
it was a punishment on her for running away. So she made Miranda
promise she would never, for any reason whatever, do it.

"Of course, you cannot urge a girl to break a promise made to a dying
mother, so I did not see what Miranda could do unless she got Joe to
come to the house when her father was away and marry her there. But
Miranda said that couldn't be managed. Her father seemed to suspect she
might be up to something of the sort and he never went away for long at
a time, and, of course, Joe couldn't get leave of absence at an hour's
notice.

"'No, I shall just have to let Joe go, and he will be killed--I know he
will be killed--and my heart will