tion that red was not to be worn by fair people, male or
female.

However, she loved and admired Horace in spite of these minor
drawbacks, and had a fiercely maternal impulse of protection towards
him. She was convinced that every mother in East Westland, with a
marriageable daughter, and every daughter, had matrimonial designs
upon him; and she considered that none of them were good enough for
him. She did not wish him to marry in any case. She had suspicions
about young women whom he might have met while on his vacation.

After supper, when the dishes had been cleared away, and they sat in
the large south room, and Horace had admired that and its
furnishings, Sylvia led up to the subject.

"I suppose you know a good many people in Boston," she remarked.

"Yes," replied Horace. "You know, I was born and brought up and
educated there, and lived there until my people died."

"I suppose you know a good many young ladies."

"Thousands," said Horace; "but none of them will look at me."

"You didn't ask them?"

"Not all, only a few, but they wouldn't."

"I'd like to know why not?"

Then Henry spoke. "Sylvia," he said, "Mr. Allen is only joking."

"I hope he is," Sylvia said, severely. "He's too young to think of
getting married. It makes me sick, though, to see the way girls chase
any man, and their mothers, too, for that matter. Mrs. Jim Jones and
Mrs. Sam Elliot both came while you were gone, Mr. Allen. They said
they thought maybe we wouldn't take a boarder now we have come into
property, and maybe you would like to go there, and I knew just as
well as if they had spoken what they had in their minds. There's
Minnie Jones as homely as a broom, and there's Carrie Elliot getting
older, and--"

"Sylvia!" said Henry.

"I don't care. Mr. Allen knows what's going on just as well as I do.
Neither of those women can cook fit for a cat to eat, let alone
anything else. Lucy Ayres came here twice on errands, too, and--"

But Horace colored, and spoke suddenly. "I didn't know that you would
take me back," he said. "I was afraid--"

"We don't need to, as far as money goes," said Sylvia, "but Mr.
Whitman and I like to have the company, and you never make a mite of
trouble. That's what I told Mrs. Jim Jones and Mrs. Sam Elliot."

"I'm glad he's got back," Henry said, after Horace had gone up-stairs
for the night and the couple were in their own room, a large one out
of the sitting-room.

"So am I," assented Sylvia.