hood; she had gone, without the slightest craving for "the higher
education," but naturally with the idea of having a "good time"; and
apparently she had it, for she came home engaged to a handsome, amatory
boy, one of her fellow "students," named Goward. At this point Aunt
Elizabeth, with her red hair and pink frock, had interfered and lured
off the Goward, who behaved in a manner which appeared to me to reduce
him to a negligible quantity. But the family evidently did not think so,
for they all promptly began to interfere, Maria and Charles Edward and
Alice and even Billy, each one with an independent plan, either to lure
the Goward back or to eliminate him. Alice had the most original idea,
which was to marry Peggy to Dr. Denbigh; but this clashed with Maria's
idea, which was to entangle the doctor with Aunt Elizabeth in order that
the Goward might be recaptured. It was all extremely complicated and
unnecessary (from my point of view), and of course it transpired and
circulated through the gossip of the town, and poor Peggy was much
afflicted and ashamed. Now the engagement was off; Aunt Elizabeth had
gone into business with a clairvoyant woman in New York; Goward was in
the hospital with a broken arm, and Peggy was booked to go to Europe on
Saturday with Charles Edward and Lorraine.

"Quite right," I exclaimed at this point in the story. "Everything has
turned out just as it should, like a romance in an old-fashioned ladies'
magazine."

"Not at all," broke out Talbert; "you don't know the whole of it, Maria
has told me" (oh, my prophetic soul, Maria!) "that Charley and his wife
have asked a friend of theirs, a man named Dane, ten years older than
Peggy, a professor in that blank coeducational college, to go with them,
and that she is sure they mean to make her marry him."

"What Dane is that?" I interrupted. "Is his first name Stillman--nephew
of my old friend Harvey Dane, the publisher? Because, if that's so, I
know him; about twenty-eight years old; good family, good head, good
manners, good principles; just the right age and the right kind for
Peggy--a very fine fellow indeed."

"That makes no difference," continued Cyrus, fiercely. "I don't care
whose nephew he is, nor how old he is, nor what his manners are. My
point is that Peggy positively shall not be pushed, or inveigled, or
dragooned, or personally conducted into marrying anybody at all! Billy
and Alice were wandering around Charley's garden last Friday