make birch whistles for
her mother--to tell me all about her young man. She brought me that
spray of honeysuckle over the pipes--grows over the front gate. She
wants to marry him before her father gets to like him, but she hates
to run away. 'Would you advise me to, Peter?' she says. And I
advised her to wait.

"Then there's my friend the blacksmith. He lives in a queer little
house with dormer windows under a hill, just off the county road.
He's got a new baby, and he was afraid it wouldn't pull through. He
knew I'd seen a lot of babies--black and red and yellow--and _he_
wanted my advice. 'Peter, what'll I do?' he says, 'what'll I do?'

"'Why, just wait, Harvey. He'll live. Just wait,' I told him."

Caroline listened with interest. He might have been talking to his
equal in years, from his tone.

"Then, oddly enough," he continued, "here's my old friend in the big
house up yonder--and she _is_ old--and what do you think she's
worried about? She's afraid she _won't_ die! 'Oh, Peter,' she says
to me--she's fond of me because I'm the same age as a little boy of
hers that died--'it seems to me that I can't wait, Peter! What shall
I do?' she says. And I tell _her_ to wait. 'Dear old friend,' said I
to her last night, 'it will come. It's bound to come. Just be
patient.'"

He paused and knocked his pipe empty.

"Now, as to your case," he said, "I know how you feel. I'm sorry for
you--by the Lord, I'm sorry for you! But what's the use of running
away? You'll keep on growing up, you know. It's one of the things
that doesn't stop. You can't beat the game by wearing knickers, you
know. And then, there'd come a time when you'd want to quit,
anyhow."

She shook her head.

"Really, you would," he assured her, persuasively. "They all do."

"That's what Uncle Joe says," she admitted, "and Aunt Edith. She
changed her mind, she says--"

"Are you talking about Joe Holt?" Peter demanded.

"Yes--do you know him? He lives in a big white house with wistaria
on the side," Caroline cried joyfully.

"I was a senior when he was a freshman," said Peter. "Then he's
taken the Washburn house."

"Do you know Aunt Edith, too?" asked Caroline.

"Yes," said Peter, after a pause, "yes, I know Aunt Edith--or used
to. But I didn't know she--they were up in this country. I haven't
seen her--them for a good while. Does--does she sing yet?"

"Oh, yes, but not on the stage any more, you know," Caroline
explained.

"I see. Does she sing