d by his final acknowledgment
that she was a good girl and he would as soon have her come again
whenever she felt like it.

On her way back to school she spent a week with her friend, Margaret
Louise, in the Connecticut town where she lived with her comfortable,
commonplace family. It was while she was on this visit that the most
significant event of the entire year took place, though it was a
happening that she put out of her mind as soon as possible and never
thought of it again when she could possibly avoid it.

Maggie Lou had a brother of seventeen, and one night in the corner of
a moonlit porch, when they happened to be alone for a half hour, he
had asked Eleanor to kiss him.

"I don't want to kiss you," Eleanor said. Then, not wishing to convey
a sense of any personal dislike to the brother of a friend to whom
she was so sincerely devoted, she added, "I don't know you well
enough."

He was a big boy, with mocking blue eyes and rough tweed clothes that
hung on him loosely.

"When you know me better, will you let me kiss you?" he demanded.

"I don't know," Eleanor said, still endeavoring to preserve the
amenities.

He took her hand and played with it softly.

"You're an awful sweet little girl," he said.

"I guess I'll go in now."

"Sit still. Sister'll be back in a minute." He pulled her back to the
chair from which she had half arisen. "Don't you believe in kissing?"

"I don't believe in kissing _you_," she tried to say, but the words
would not come. She could only pray for deliverance through the
arrival of some member of the family. The boy's face was close to
hers. It looked sweet in the moonlight she thought. She wished he
would talk of something else besides kissing.

"Don't you like me?" he persisted.

"Yes, I do." She was very uncomfortable.

"Well, then, there's no more to be said." His lips sought hers and
pressed them. His breath came heavily, with little irregular catches
in it.

She pushed him away and turned into the house.

"Don't be angry, Eleanor," he pleaded, trying to snatch at her hand.

"I'm not angry," she said, her voice breaking, "I just wish you
hadn't, that's all."

There was no reference to this incident in the private diary, but,
with an instinct which would have formed an indissoluble bond between
herself and her Uncle Jimmie, she avoided dimly lit porches and boys
with mischievous eyes and broad tweed covered shoulders.

For her guardians too, this year was co