to be nearest
them, and woe be unto them if that nearest happen to be a tyrant. Her
meekness fairly infuriated Jerry.

But we liked Miss Ponsonby and we pitied her. She confided to us that
she was very lonely and that she wrote poetry. We never asked to see
the poetry, although I think she would have liked to show it. But, as
Jerry says, there are limits.

We told Miss Ponsonby all about our dances and picnics and beaus and
pretty dresses; she was never tired of hearing of them; we smuggled
new library novels--Jerry got our cook to buy them--and boxes of
chocolates, from our window to hers; we sat there on moonlit nights
and communed with her while other girls down the street were
entertaining callers on their verandahs; we did everything we could
for her except to call her Alicia, although she begged us to do so.
But it never came easily to our tongues; we thought she must have been
born and christened Miss Ponsonby; "Alicia" was something her mother
could only have dreamed about her.

We thought we knew all about Miss Ponsonby's past; but even pale,
drab, china-blue women can have their secrets and keep them. It was a
full half year before we discovered Miss Ponsonby's.

* * * * *

In October, Stephen Shaw came home from the west to visit his father
and mother after an absence of fifteen years. Jerry and I met him at a
party at his brother-in-law's. We knew he was a bachelor of forty-five
or so and had made heaps of money in the lumber business, so we
expected to find him short and round and bald, with bulgy blue eyes
and a double chin. On the contrary, he was a tall, handsome man with
clear-cut features, laughing black eyes like a boy's, and iron-grey
hair. That iron-grey hair nearly finished Jerry; she thinks there is
nothing so distinguished and she had the escape of her life from
falling in love with Stephen Shaw.

He was as gay as the youngest, danced splendidly, went everywhere, and
took all the Glenboro girls about impartially. It was rumoured that he
had come east to look for a wife but he didn't seem to be in any
particular hurry to find her.

One evening he called on Jerry; that is to say, he did ask for both of
us, but within ten minutes Jerry had him mewed up in the cosy corner
to the exclusion of all the rest of the world. I felt that I was a
huge crowd, so I obligingly decamped upstairs and sat down by my
window to "muse," as Miss Ponsonby would have said.

It w