up
the rear to pick up any stray rose-leaf we might drop. In the south-west
room, where there was no carpet to fade, we spread them on newspapers on
the floor. Then we put our sweet-grass baskets back in the proper place
in the proper closet in the proper room. What would have happened to us,
or to the sweet-grass baskets, if this had not been done I do not know.
Nothing was ever permitted to remain an instant out of place in Aunt
Olivia's house.

When we went downstairs, Aunt Olivia asked us to go into the parlour.
She had something to tell us, she said, and as she opened the door a
delicate pink flush spread over her face. I noted it, with surprise, but
no inkling of the truth came to me--for nobody ever connected the idea
of possible lovers or marriage with this prim little old maid, Olivia
Sterling.

Aunt Olivia's parlour was much like herself--painfully neat. Every
article of furniture stood in exactly the same place it had always
stood. Nothing was ever suffered to be disturbed. The tassels of the
crazy cushion lay just so over the arm of the sofa, and the crochet
antimacassar was always spread at precisely the same angel over the
horsehair rocking chair. No speck of dust was ever visible; no fly ever
invaded that sacred apartment.

Aunt Olivia pulled up a blind, to let in what light could sift finely
through the vine leaves, and sat down in a high-backed old chair that
had appertained to her great-grandmother. She folded her hands in her
lap, and looked at us with shy appeal in her blue-gray eyes. Plainly she
found it hard to tell us her secret, yet all the time there was an air
of pride and exultation about her; somewhat, also, of a new dignity.
Aunt Olivia could never be self-assertive, but if it had been possible
that would have been her time for it.

"Have you ever heard me speak of Mr. Malcolm MacPherson?" asked Aunt
Olivia.

We had never heard her, or anybody else, speak of Mr. Malcolm
MacPherson; but volumes of explanation could not have told us more about
him than did Aunt Olivia's voice when she pronounced his name. We knew,
as if it had been proclaimed to us in trumpet tones, that Mr. Malcolm
MacPherson must be Aunt Olivia's beau, and the knowledge took away our
breath. We even forgot to be curious, so astonished were we.

And there sat Aunt Olivia, proud and shy and exulting and shamefaced,
all at once!

"He is a brother of Mrs. John Seaman's across the bridge," explained
Aunt Olivia with a